LIBRARY  OF  THE  THEOLOGICAL  SEMINARY 

PRINCETON,     N.    J. 
Presented  by 

Greorde    Landing    Ko»urnoricA. 

Division AJL*     * 

Section 


Other  Books  by  the  Same  Author 

"A  Life  in  Song,"  "Ballads  of  the  Revolution  and  Other 
Poems,"  "Modern  Fishers  of  Men,"  "The  Orator's  Manual," 
"The  Speaker,"  in  part,  "The  Writer,"  in  party  "Art  in 
Theory,"  "The  Representative  Significance  of  Form," 
"Poetry  as  a  Representative  Art,"  "Painting,  Sculpture,  and 
Architecture  as  Representative  Arts,"  "The  Genesis  of  Art- 
Form,"  "Rhythm  and  Harmony  in  Music  and  Poetry, 
together  with  Music  as  a  Representative  Art,"  "Proportion 
and  Harmony  of  Line  and  Color  in  Painting,  Sculpture,  and 
Architecture,"  "The  Aztec  God  and  Other  Dramas,"  "The 
Psychology  of  Inspiration,"  "The  Essentials  of  Esthetics," 
"Fundamentals  in  Education,  Art,  and  Civics,"  "Sugges- 
tions for  the  Spiritual  Life,"  "Dante  and  Collected  Verse," 
"The  Mountains  about  Williamstown,"  etc. 


Ethics  and  Natural  Law    1925  v 


OSKM  St*! 


A  Reconstructive  Review  of  Moral  Philosophy 
Applied  to  the  Rational  Art  of  Living 


By 
George  Lansing  Raymond,  L.H.D* 

Professor  of  Oratory  in  "Williams  College,  J 874- \ 88 J;  of  Oratory  and 

/Esthetic  Criticism,  Princeton  University,  J880-J893;  of  /Esthetics, 

Princeton  University,  J  893-  \  905;  of  ^Esthetics,  George  "Washington 

University,  J90549J2. 


Second  Edition  Revised 


G*  P*  Putnam's  Sons 

New  York  London 

XI  be  Umfcfcerbocfeer  press 


Copyright,  1920 

BY 

GEORGE  LANSING  RAYMOND 


rtS 


Made  in  the  United  States  of  America 


To  the   Memory  of 
MARK  HOPKINS 

TEACHER  OF  MENTAL  AND  MORAL  PHILOSOPHY  IN  WILLIAMS  COLLEGE 
I83O-1887 

The  American  Socrates  who,  probing  the  resources  of  thought  in  the 
minds  of  his  pupils,  guided  them  of  themselves,  as  it  were,  to  discover, 
put  together,  and  complete  conceptions  as  nearly  harmonious  as  possi- 
ble concerning  the  power  and  purpose  of  life  in  all  its  relations  to  them- 
selves, their  fellows,  their  country,  and  their  God;  with  treasured 
recollections  of  processes  of  thinking  illustrated  by  him  for  nine  hours 
a  week  during  an  entire  College  year,  while  all  whom  he  instructed 
were  alert  with  interest,  and  many  were  frequently  thrilled  as  rarely  by 
the  cumulative  effects  of  any  other  form  of  eloquence,  this  excursion 
into  the  field  of  applied  ethics  which  this  great  educator  had  made 
peculiarly  his  own  is  gratefully 

DEDICATED 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2011  with  funding  from 

Princeton  Theological  Seminary  Library 


http://www.archive.org/details/ethicsnaturallawOOraym 


PREFACE 


THE  principles  of  ethics  have  been  discussed  in  many 
comprehensive  volumes,  A  new  discussion  cannot 
be  attempted  without  causing  the  intelligent  reader 
to  ask  why  it  is  needed.  Without  referring  to  other  reasons, 
a  sufficient  answer  to  this  may  be  found  in  the  fact  that 
the  war  just  closing  has  directed  attention,  as,  perhaps,  noth- 
ing before  ever  has,  to  the  influence  upon  public  sentiment 
and  private  character  of  certain  ethical  theories;  and,  in 
connection  with  this,  to  the  importance  of  making,  if  pos- 
sible, a  more  careful  study  than  has  hitherto  been  attempted 
of  the  practical  effects  of  all  such  theories.  It  has  come  to 
be  recognized  more  universally  than  up  to  this  time  has 
been  the  case,  that  none  of  these  can  be  supposed  to  have 
merely  a  speculative  or  philosophic  value.  A  reconstruc- 
tive review  of  them,  therefore,  in  accordance  with  this  con- 
ception of  their  influence  seems  necessarily  suggested,  if  not 
demanded. 

To  recall  the  facts  with  reference  to  the  origin  and 
development  of  the  conception,  the  reader  needs  merely  to 
be  reminded  that  there  has  been  no  charitable  way  of  ex- 
plaining the  alarming  innovations  in  warfare  and  government 
which  have  been  adopted  in  Germany  and  Russia  except  by 
attributing  them  less  to  the  inherent  nature  of  their  inhabi- 
tants than  to  false  opinions  inculcated  among  them  for 
many  years  through  educational  training  and  popular  litera- 
ture. Through  only  such  agencies  could  whole  communities 
have  been  induced  to  believe  that  the  state  is  the  source  of 
moral  authority,  and  that,  in  case  of  conflict  between  it  and 
individual  opinion  and  conscience,  the  latter  must  invariably 
be  made  to  yield,  even  if  this  involve  such  clear  violations 
of  the  principles  of  individual  moral  sense  as  are  manifested 
in  the  worst  results  of  warfare. 

In  Germany,  the  extent  to  which  the  theory  that  a  man's 


Vl  PREFACE 

first  duty  is  to  obey  the  dictates  of  someone  at  the  head  of 
the  state,  or  of  some  official  representing  him,  had  been 
accepted  by  even  the  most  intelligent  people  was  shown 
early  in  the  war  by  ninety-three  of  its  foremost  university 
professors  who  signed  a  statement  with  reference  to  the 
causes  of  the  conflict,  and  to  the  methods  of  conducting  it 
in  Belgium  which  few,  if  any  of  them,  could  have  had  op- 
portunity to  verify,  and  which,  subsequently,  was  proved  to 
be  false.  How  could  men  with  previous  high  reputations  as 
historians  and  teachers  of  ethics  have  been  induced  to  ex- 
hibit themselves  as  victims  of  one  of  the  worst  effects  of 
national  tyranny?  How  could  they  have  been  made  to 
convict  themselves  of  being  either  willing  to  swear  to  what 
was  false,  or  afraid  to  keep  silence  ?  The  only  reason  which 
can  be  conceived  for  this  is  that  the  evil  spirit  of  which,  to 
use  the  language  of  Scripture,  they  were  temporarily  pos- 
sessed, was  in  some  way  connected  with  a  false  ethical 
theory  with  reference  to  the  relation  of  the  state  to  its 
own  people  and  to  those  of  other  nationalities. 

As  for  the  Russians,  their  acceptance  of  a  similar  theory 
was  manifested  by  what  happened  when  the  Czar  who  was 
at  the  head  of  their  church  as  well  as  state  was  removed. 
After  the  people  had  lost  him,  many  of  them  seem  to  have 
lost  everything  that  had  the  slightest  influence  in  the  direc- 
tion of  morality.  Apparently,  in  some  communities  almost 
every  man  who  owned  a  gun  and  nothing  else  went  shooting 
for  his  neighbor  and  his  neighbor's  property;  or,  if,  now  and 
then,  he  did  consider  the  rights  of  others,  these  were  those 
alone  of  his  own  class,  working  for  whom  he  could  have  the 
gratification  of  feeling  that  he  was  really  working  for  him- 
self. Toward  persons  of  other  classes,  he  manifested  still 
less  courtesy,  consideration,  helpfulness,  sympathy,  to  say 
nothing  about  truthfulness,  justice,  rationality,  self-denial, 
and  self-control,  than  had  the  official  autocrat  whom  the 
revolution  had  removed. 

How  much  better,  the  reader  is  probably  now  inclined 
to  exclaim,  are  the  conceptions  and  characteristics  of  the 
people  of  our  own  country!  But  are  they  so  much  better? 
Or  do  we  merely  imagine  that  they  are  so  because  the  facts 
with  reference  to  them  have  been  more  or  less  concealed? 
Let  us  recall  how  close  is  the  connection,  in  these  days,  be- 
tween other  countries  and  our  own ;  and  how  inevitably  any 
thought  originated  in  one  of  them  is  communicated  to  all. 


PREFACE  vii 

President  R.  B.  Hayes  once,  in  referring  to  a  fortunate  dip- 
lomatic escape,  aptly  quoted  to  the  author  the  well-known 
saying  that  "a  merciful  Providence  seems  to  take  care  of 
children,  drunken  people,  and  the  United  States."  A  few 
years  ago,  many  of  our  keenest  thinkers  feared  that  we  were 
drifting  toward  a  national  moral  collapse  not  exactly  the 
same  in  form  but  as  threatening  in  disastrous  effects  as  that 
which  has  overtaken  some  of  the  peoples  of  Europe.  Now, 
at  last,  many  think  that  they  have  reason  to  hope  that  this 
danger  may  be  averted  because  of  the  lessons  taught  through 
what  has  been  experienced  in  this  war. 

The  fundamental  causes  of  the  conditions  revealed  by  it 
so  far  as  they  are  moral,  which  are  the  only  ones  that  con- 
cern us  at  present,  are  all  connected  with  a  single  conception, 
which,  in  a  general  way,  may  be  termed  materialistic.  To 
perceive  what  is  meant  by  this  term,  let  us  analyze  it  a 
little.  As  we  do  so,  we  shall  find  three  of  its  constituent 
elements  particularly  prominent.  The  first  traces  the 
source  of  morality  to  that  which  is  external  to  the  man,  not 
internal.  This  explains  why  the  conception  identifies  it 
with  the  decrees  of  the  rulers  or  other  officials  of  the  state. 
It  is  because  these  are  the  representatives  of  the  state's 
external  organization.  The  second  attributes  promotion 
of  morality  to  exercise  of  physical  rather  than  psychical 
force.  This  explains  why  the  conception  is  associated  with 
the  effects  of  militarism.  The  third  associates  the  object 
of  morality  with  bodily  or  practical,  not  mental  or  ideal 
betterment.  This  explains  why  the  test  of  its  efficiency  is 
supposed  to  be  afforded  by  an  increase  in  a  nation's  or  an 
individual's  financial,  commercial,  or  landed  possessions. 

Thus  analyzed,  it  is  easy  to  perceive  that  every  phase 
of  the  general  conception  is  at  variance  with  certain  funda- 
mental principles  that  underlie  our  own  country's  institu- 
tions. According  to  these  principles,  moral  actions,  as 
proved  by  the  fact  that  they  are  not  attributable  to  a  lower 
animal,  are  traceable  to  a  man's  individual  rationality — 
to  what  is  within  himself;  or  to  conform  this  statement  to 
the  title  of  this  book — to  what  he  has  been  made  to  be 
through  the  operation  of  natural  law.  For  this  reason  too 
such  actions  are  legitimately  influenced  by  only  one  thing, 
— not  physical  force  but  psychical  truth ;  and  for  this  reason, 
too,  they  result  not  in  an  increase  of  material  bodily  posses- 
sions but  in  ability  to  subordinate  all  possessions  to  the 


Vlll  PREFACE 

control  and  purposes  of  the  higher  intelligent  nature.  So 
far,  therefore,  as  moral  conditions  can  be  judged  by  the 
theory  of  which  they  are  expressions,  it  would  seem  that  we 
have  reason  to  claim  superiority  for  our  own  country.  But 
do  all  our  country's  people  accept  the  theories  that  have 
been  stated,  and  conform  their  actions  to  them? 

A  professor  in  a  prominent  American  theological  semi- 
nary was  removed  from  his  position  a  year  or  two  ago  because 
of  his  expression  of  views  supposed  to  indicate  loyalty,  not 
to  our  own  nation,  but  to  nations  with  which  ours  was  at 
war.  Long  before  the  war,  however,  the  same  professor, 
in  the  presence  of  the  author,  had  defended  the  sabotage 
methods  of  the  English  suffragettes — in  other  words,  the 
obtaining  of  a  political  and  legislative  end  through  the  use 
of  physical  force.  Is  it  too  much  to  say  that,  in  defending 
this  method,  he  had  already  manifested  disloyalty  of  feeling 
toward  the  principles  at  the  basis  of  our  institutions?  No 
matter  how  desirable  a  change  in  laws  may  be,  no  reform, 
in  a  republic  like  ours,  can  begin  to  be  as  desirable  as  faith 
in  human  reason,  and  in  truth  as  the  chief  and,  usually, 
the  only  appropriate  agency  to  be  used  in  causing  the  reform. 
Truth  is  evidently  never  so  regarded  when  there  is  resort 
to  methods  of  controlling  opinion  or  action  that  are  not  in 
their  nature  psychical.  In  cases  of  riot,  rebellion,  or  war, 
physical  force  must  sometimes  be  resisted  by  physical  force. 
But  otherwise  brickbats,  bludgeons,  bonfires,  bullets,  or 
even  ballots,  if  the  latter  be  aimed  at  intimidating  and  sup- 
pressing the  rational  promptings  of  the  mind  on  the  part  of 
voters  or  legislators,  are  not  needed ;  but  only  a  change  in  the 
opinions  of  individual  citizens.  These  vote  for  the  law- 
makers, and,  therefore,  more  or  less  control  the  law-makers' 
actions.  As  a  rule,  men's  opinions  are  appropriately  altered 
partly  by  personal  experience  and  association  with  others, 
and  partly  by  arguments  presented  in  books,  magazines, 
newspapers,  or  public  addresses.  After  this  effect  has  been 
produced,  a  similar  effect  will  also  be  produced  upon  the 
legislators  for  whom  the  majority  vote.  Moreover,  because 
conforming  to  the  opinions  of  people  in  general,  laws  so 
occasioned  will  be  obeyed  without  need  of  any  great  effort 
to  enforce  them.  This  is  one  reason  why  the  constitution 
of  the  United  States  prescribes  certain  subjects  concerning 
which  laws  can  be  passed  by  only  the  Congress  at  Washing- 
ton; and  certain  other  subjects  concerning  which  laws  can 


PREFACE  IX 

be  passed  by  only  the  State  legislatures.  In  a  country  as 
large  as  ours,  those  living  in  one  section  often  demand  laws 
of  which  those  living  in  another  section  have  no  need,  and 
frequently  disapprove.  Certain  occurrences  illustrating 
both  the  advantages  and  the  disadvantages  of  this  con- 
stitutional provision  are  mentioned  in  Chapter  XXI  of  the 
present  volume. 

Of  course,  one  who  acknowledges  the  principles  just  stated 
and  accepts  truth  as  the  sole  or  main  weapon  through  which 
to  attain  political  results,  must,  with  it,  often  exercise  pa- 
tience, content  to  wait  until  his  adversaries  have  had  time 
to  think  and  reconstruct  their  conceptions.  But  this  is 
something  that  the  most  elementary  forms  of  courtesy  and 
respect  for  others  and  for  their  opinions  ought  of  themselves 
to  incline  him  to  do.  Much  more  should  he  do  this  in  a 
country  whose  whole  form  of  government  is  based  upon  faith 
in  human  nature  and  in  the  workings  of  the  human  mind. 
An  American  ought  to  be  in  sufficient  sympathy  with  this 
faith  to  believe  that  all  that  is  necessary  in  order  to  induce 
the  majority  of  people  to  think  and  to  act  in  accordance  with 
right  is  a  persistent  presentation  to  them  of  the  facts  of 
a  case  and  of  inferences  legitimately  derived  from  them. 
When  success  has  crowned  effort  thus  pursued,  its  effects 
are  well-nigh  certain  to  prove  comprehensive  and  perma- 
nent. Nothing  is  so  difficult  to  reverse  as  public  sentiment 
that  is  a  result  of  ample  instruction  and  deliberate  reflection. 

Disbelief  in  the  effectiveness  of  these  two  latter  agencies 
is  largely  owing  in  our  country,  as  in  Germany,  to  the  attribu- 
ting of  such  moral  influence  as  can  thwart  and  end  vice  and 
crime  to  the  enactments  of  the  state.  It  is  for  this  reason 
that  many  with  the  highest  intentions  have  welcomed  any 
methods,  no  matter  how  contrary  to  the  spirit  or  even  to  the 
letter  of  our  form  of  government,  through  which,  as  they 
have  supposed,  their  wishes  as  expressed  in  their  votes  can 
be  immediately  transmuted  into  legal  statutes.  The  error 
of  their  conception  consists  not  in  its  ascribing  a  certain 
degree  of  influence  to  the  action  of  the  state,  but  in  ascrib- 
ing to  it  predominant  and  exclusive  influence.  Impersonal 
public  enactments  have  nothing  in  themselves  alone  that 
can  prove  corrective  of  personal  character.  It  is  only  the 
influence  and  example  of  other  persons,  mainly  in  the  family, 
the  school,  the  business,  and  the  church,  but  sometimes  also 
in  the  state,  that  is  capable,  as  a  rule,  of  inspiring  to  higher 


X  PREFACE 

and  nobler  effort.  Few  more  debasing  conditions  could  be 
found  than  in  more  than  one  State  in  our  country  in  which 
a  law  is  supposed  to  have  been  framed  so  as  entirely  to 
abolish  them.     See  note  on  page  285  of  this  volume. 

The  failure  of  such  laws  to  do  what  is  expected  of  them  is 
owing  in  part,  as  has  been  intimated,  to  the  attributing 
of  morality  to  material  influences,  but  it  is  owing  also  to  a 
false  conception  with  reference  to  the  aims  of  morality,  and 
therefore  to  the  end  toward  which  these  laws  should  be 
directed.  Apparently,  large  numbers  of  people  suppose  them 
intended  to  influence  merely  the  material  conditions  and 
environments  of  those  for  whose  benefit  they  are  enacted. 
This  opinion  seems  to  be  quite  general  among  those  who 
emphasize  the  socialistic  side  of  work  among  the  masses. 
It  may  be  ascribed  to  some  even  of  those  engaged  in  that 
kindly,  humane,  and  self-denying  form  of  service  that  is 
termed  settlement- work — the  settlement  of  educated,  re- 
fined men  and  women  in  a  slum  neighborhood  of  a  city  with 
the  object  of  associating  with  the  families  surrounding  them, 
and,  through  example  and  instruction,  stimulating  and 
leading  them  to  more  intelligent,  industrious,  clean,  refined, 
and  enjoyable  modes  of  life.  There  is  no  doubt  that  some, 
even  of  these  workers,  have  directed  their  attention  too 
exclusively  to  bodily  and  material  betterment,  and,  in 
doing  so,  have  forgotten  the  mental  and  the  spiritual.  Some 
of  them  have  gone  so  far — one  or  two  occasionally  in  prac- 
tice, but  more  in  theory — as  virtually  to  emancipate  them- 
selves and  their  closest  followers  from  what  they  consider 
mere  conventionalities  of  society  and  church;  but  which 
are  really  the  best  methods  yet  discovered  through  which 
physical  conditions  can  be  made  to  have  a  molding  influ- 
ence upon  psychical  possibilities.  The  purely  socialistic 
conception  of  all  forms  of  benevolent  work  is  too  apt  to  put 
the  cart  before  the  horse;  to  assign  supreme  importance  to 
that  which  is  merely  the  husk,  the  form,  the  appearance  of 
morality;  and  to  overlook  or,  at  least,  underrate  that  which 
constitutes  its  kernel,  its  spirit,  its  essence  of  life. 

The  most  unfortunate  result  of  this  view  is  that,  to  those 
who  accept  it,  the  whole  object  of  life — that  which  explains 
it — remains  unperceived  and  therefore  unsought.  As  a 
fact,  it  is  impossible  to  emancipate  a  human  being  from  the 
restraints  of  material  surroundings.  All  his  efforts  to  do 
this,  or  any  other  person's  efforts  to  do  it  for  him,  can 


PREFACE  XI 

merely,  even  when  most  successful,  change  the  form  in 
which  these  restraints  are  manifested.  As  a  fact,  too,  he 
ought  not  to  be  emancipated  from  them.  He  needs  them. 
He  must  have  them.  Otherwise  his  higher  nature  cannot  be 
developed  as  it  should  be.  It  becomes  him,  therefore,  in 
any  country  in  which  the  restraints  have  been  proved  to  be 
less  irksome  than  in  others,  to  be  profoundly  thankful  that 
this  is  so ;  to  guard  sacredly  such  rights  as  he  already  pos- 
sesses, and  to  welcome  changes  in  the  methods  of  society 
or  state  so  far  only  as  it  can  be  made  clear  that  they  will 
further  the  facility  with  which  the  individual  can  give  ex- 
pression, in  word  or  deed,  to  those  promptings  within  him 
which,  for  reasons  to  be  unfolded  in  this  volume  are  always, 
at  one  and  the  same  time,  the  most  in  accordance  with  his 
own  highest  desires  and  with  the  greatest  good  of  others. 

Enough  has  been  said  in  this  preface  to  suggest  to  those 
interested  in  the  subject  why  it  is  that  the  author  has 
thought  it  desirable  to  re-examine  the  philosophical  bases  of 
ethics,  together  with  some  of  their  more  important  prac- 
tical applications .  Notwithstanding  the  very  valuable  work 
that  has  been  done  in  this  department,  circumstances  have 
changed,  and  additional  discussion  seems  to  be  needed.  This 
is  especially  true  as  applied  to  certain  theories  that  have  only 
recently  attracted  particular  attention .  B  ut  it  is  also  true  of 
others  that  have  been  discussed  for  years  but  are  beginning 
now  to  be  viewed  in  new  relations.  Take  institutionism,  for 
instance,  which  is  exemplified  in  the  German  conception  of 
morality  as  determined  by  the  state.  This  conception  is 
too  narrow.  It  leaves  out  that  which  is  determined,  and 
ought  to  be  determined,  by  other  conditions,  especially  by 
those  that  concern  the  individual.  Or  take  such  theories 
as  have  been  termed  intuitional,  emotional,  instinctive,  teleo- 
logical,  utilitarian,  hedonistic,  or  such  aims  of  ethical  action 
as  have  been  associated  with  altruism,  universal  welfare, 
the  greatest  happiness  of  the  greatest  number,  benevolence, 
sympathy,  love  or  the  highest  form  of  self-realization.  A  man 
might  aim  at  what  he  might  consider  the  most  important  of 
these,  and  yet  scarcely  attain  that  which  would  make  him 
a  useful  enough  citizen  to  keep  him  out  of  a  poor-house. 
There  seem  to  be  in  them  all  more  or  less  evidences  of  a 
lack  of  thorough  analysis.  Of  course,  the  same  accusation 
is  likely  to  be  made  against  any  theory,  and,  therefore, 
against  that  presented  in  this  volume.     At  the  present  time, 


Xll  PREFACE 

it  is  most  likely  to  be  made  by  those  who  have  become  inter- 
ested in  the  results  of  the  study  of  physiological  psychology. 
These  certainly  have  something  to  do  with  the  conditions 
underlying  ethics.  Why,  therefore,  has  this  subject  not 
been  more  fully  discussed  in  these  pages?  There  are  two 
reasons.  The  first  is  the  present  indeterminate  character  of 
these  results.  This  is  acknowledged  even  by  those  who  think 
themselves  justified,  as  all  do  not,  in  arguing  that  conditions 
have  been  considerably  changed  since  Professor  William 
James  (i 842-1910)  of  Harvard  University  said,  in  the 
epilogue  of  his  Psychology  that  the  results  give  us  only  "a 
string  of  raw  facts,  a  little  gossip,  and  ...  a  strong  pre- 
judice that  we  have  states  of  mind,  but  not  a  single  law  in 
the  sense  in  which  physics  show  us  laws."  The  other 
reason  is  that,  according  to  the  theory  presented  in  this  book, 
the  features  that  are  distinctive  of  ethics  do  not  begin  to 
exert  their  influence  until  after  those  distinctive  of  psycho- 
physics  have,  so  to  speak,  been  ended.  The  latter  have  to 
do  with  the  methods  through  which  certain  physical  ele- 
ments and  instrumentalities  of  thinking  are  derived  and 
combined  into  psychical  results.  Ethics  has  to  do  with  the 
effects  of  certain  completed  psychical  results  after  they  have 
assumed  the  form  of  definite  tendencies  and  conceptions. 
Even  then,  moreover,  according  to  the  theory  that  this 
book  has  been  written  to  emphasize,  the  ethical  results  are 
not  connected  with  the  psycho-physical  processes  by  way  of 
derivation  from  them  or  development  through  them,  but 
by  way  of  antagonism  and  counteraction.  This  is  a  con- 
dition not  disputed  but  admitted  by  such  forerunners  of 
physiological  psychology  as  Darwin,  Spencer,  and  Huxley 
(see  pages  98,  99).  None  of  them  deny  an  ethical  inter- 
ference attributable  to  an  a  priori  influence.  Huxley,  for 
instance,  says  in  his  essay  on  " Evolution  and  Ethics"  that 
"the  practice  of  that  which  is  ethically  best  .  .  .  involves 
a  course  of  conduct  which,  in  all  respects,  is  opposed  to  that " 
— meaning  evidently  the  survival  of  the  fittest — ' '  which  leads 
to  success  in  the  cosmic  struggle  for  existence."  Yet  what 
evolutionist  has  ever  propounded  a  theory  that  can  fully 
account  for  this  condition?  Is  it  not  justifiable  to  say  that, 
as  applied  to  ethics,  a  theory  thus  defective  indicates  a  lack 
of  thorough  analysis? 

Perhaps  it  may  not  be  out  of  place  to  add  here  that  the 
analogies  between  ethical  results  in  character  and  those  of 


PREFA  CE  xiii 

harmony  in  aesthetics  which  are  brought  out  near  the  close 
of  the  more  theoretic  part  of  this  discussion  were  suggested 
by  an  expression  of  some  anonymous  journalist  describing 
in  1876  the  author's  father,  B.  W.  Raymond  (1 801-1883) 
who  was  a  prominent  merchant  and  mayor  of  Chicago. 
"The  whole  aspect,"  it  was  said,  "is  that  of  harmony  .  .  . 
of  character."  The  conception  developed  from  this  sug- 
gestion is  that  the  ethical,  wherever  manifested,  begins  in 
the  individual — in  the  inner  and  conscious  harmony  pro- 
duced by  desires  having  their  source  in  his  mind,  when  they 
are  balancing  and,  if  need  be,  subordinating  but  not  sup- 
pressing desires  having  their  source  in  his  body ;  and  that  it  is 
to  this  internal  experience  in  the  individual  that  we  must 
trace  all  such  external  relations  as  can  be  rightly  termed 
harmonious,  whether  manifested  between  one  or  more 
individuals,  or  between  collections  of  individuals,  as  in 
nations. 

In  connection  with  this  conception,  the  most  important 
moral  agency  is  proved  philosophically  to  be  that  which 
almost  all  people  who  are  not  philosophers  have  in  all  ages 
believed  it  to  be — namely,  conscience.  Whether  restraining 
from  evil  or  impelling  to  good,  all  the  functions  of  this  are 
shown  to  be  comprehended  in  a  consciousness  of  conflict 
between  the  body's  desire  and  the  mind's  desire.  As  in- 
dicated by  an  examination  of  the  natural  action  of  each  of 
these  desires,  it  is  shown  that  the  former  necessarily  seeks 
satisfaction  in  obtaining  that  which  gratifies  oneself  alone, 
no  two  persons,  for  instance,  being  able  to  eat  or  to  drink 
exactly  the  same  thing.  On  the  contrary,  the  latter  desire 
necessarily  seeks  satisfaction  in  obtaining  that  which,  at 
the  same  time,  can  be  gratifying  to  another.  Whatever 
ministers  to  the  mental  nature,  as  is  suggested  even  by  the 
anatomy  of  the  brain,  comes  through  the  eyes  and  ears, 
and  that  which  is  apprehended  through  these  need  never 
be  the  exclusive  possession  of  one  person.  Scenery,  music, 
poetry,  argument,  truth  can  all  be  enjoyed  to  the  full  by 
one  who  is  sharing  them  with  others.  Naturally,  therefore, 
the  body's  desire  tends  toward  the  irrational,  the  animal,  and 
the  selfish  and  the  mind's  desire  toward  the  rational,  the 
humane,  and  the  non-selfish.  In  itself,  however,  neither  of 
the  two  is  necessarily  moral  or  immoral.  The  gratification 
of  both  is  needed  for  the  continuance  of  human  life.  That 
which  connects  them  with  morality  is  the  impossibility 


XIV  PREFACE 

occasionally  of  gratifying  desires  of  each  kind  at  one  and  the 
same  time.  Then  the  two  conflict.  One  becomes  aware 
of  this  fact  through  conscience.  Its  function  is  to  direct 
thought  to  a  condition  of  discord  not  harmony  within  one's 
own  nature;  and,  in  some  instances,  it  continues  to  do  this 
until  the  man  has  recognized,  that,  in  the  case  presented  for 
his  consideration,  bodily  desire  should  be  made  to  accord 
and  harmonize  with  mental  desire — a  result  that  can  be 
attained  through  any  agencies  or  methods  connected  with 
the  mind  that  are  capable  of  giving  it  an  influence  sufficient 
to  accomplish  this  purpose. 

The  trend  of  thought  thus  indicated  might  be  supposed 
by  some  readers  to  be  incomplete,  because,  after  applying 
the  principles  unfolded  to  the  relations  of  the  individual 
to  family,  school,  society,  industry,  bargaining,  employ- 
ment, and  government,  no  mention  is  made  of  religion. 
But  this  is  in  accordance  with  a  deliberate  intention.     Dr. 

S.  S.  Laws  (1824 ),  formerly  President  of  the  University 

of  Missouri,  used  to  make  a  distinction  between  ethics  and 
religion,  to  the  effect  that  the  former  has  to  do  with  duties 
that  grow  out  of  relations  which  the  moral  agent  sustains  to 
other  finite  agents ;  and  the  latter  to  those  that  he  sustains 
to  God;  or  to  put  it  differently,  that  the  former  has  to  do 
with  conduct  as  related  to  present  life  on  earth,  and  the  latter 
as  related  to  future  life  beyond  the  earth.  According  to 
either  statement,  a  consideration  of  religion  is  not  necessary 
to  the  completion  of  a  discussion  upon  ethics  alone.  For 
other  reasons,  too,  it  seems  wise  to  omit  any  reference  to 
forms  of  religion  in  this  volume.  Only  by  such  a  course 
does  it  seem  possible  to  enable  it  to  accomplish  all  the 
purposes  for  which  it  was  designed.  Among  the  country- 
men of  the  author  who  must  constitute  his  constituency  are 
Catholics,  Protestants  of  many  different  sects,  Christian 
Scientists,  Spiritualists,  Theosophists,  Hebrews,  Mormons, 
Mohammedans,  Buddhists,  Confucianists,  and  the  adher- 
ents of  many  other  forms  of  religion.  The  time  may  come 
when  what  is  written  here  may  be  needed  as  an  aid  to  in- 
struction among  the  young.  No  textbook  should  contain 
material  tending  to  undermine  the  religious  beliefs  of  any 
families  represented  by  pupils  in  either  public  or  private 
schools  or  colleges.  The  time  also  may  come  when  the 
book  may  be  needed  on  account  of  the  influence  which  it 
seems  fitted  to  exert  upon  mature  minds.     It  is  exceedingly 


PREFACE  XV 

important  in  a  great  country  like  ours  to  have  the  people 
accept,  as  applied  to  family,  school,  society,  business,  and 
government,  a  single  standard  or  like  standards  of  morals. 
But  how  can  adherents  of  different  religions  or  forms  of 
religion  be  expected  to  accept  these  standards  unless  it  be 
made  clear  to  them  that,  in  doing  so,  they  are  not  accepting 
a  single  religion,  or  form  of  religion?  And  how  can  this 
be  made  clear  to  them  ?  How  else,  if  an  author  have  argued 
for  universal  acceptance  of  his  standards,  than  by  his  own 
action  in  setting  an  example  of  not  applying  them  to  reli- 
gion, but  leaving  the  adherents  of  each  religion  free  to  make 
their  applications  for  themselves  ? 

It  would  be  a  mistake  to  suppose,  however,  that  a  book 
which,  for  the  reasons  just  mentioned,  avoids  religious  con- 
troversy cannot  have  an  effect  upon  religious  life,  and  upon 
all  forms  of  it,  whether  considered  in  their  relations  to 
theory,  or  to  practice.  Just  as  a  man's  moral  nature  is 
based  and  conditioned  upon  his  mental  nature — the  na- 
ture that  differentiates  him  from  the  brute — so  his  religious 
nature  is  based  and  conditioned  upon  his  moral  nature.  In 
the  degree  in  which  he  has  right  ideas  with  reference  to 
morality,  he  will  have  right  ideas  with  reference  to  that 
which  is  fundamental  in  religion.  Take,  for  instance,  the 
conception,  in  this  book,  of  desire  as  lying  at  the  basis  of  all 
thought  and  action;  or  of  higher  desire  as  often  struggling 
against  lower  desire;  or  of  the  necessity  in  case  of  conflict 
of  not  allowing  this  latter  desire  to  outweigh  the  former; 
or  of  the  peace  of  conscience  that  attends  the  harmony 
produced  when  this  result  is  obtained;  or  of  the  mental 
ideal  that  inspires  toward  the  realization  of  this  harmony; 
or  of  the  spiritual  life  that  is  reached  and  possessed  by  him 
who  experiences  this  realization — is  it  possible  to  avoid 
perceiving  that  all  these  prepare  a  man  for  the  acceptance  of 
religious  conceptions?  What  could  be  more  religious  than 
the  complete  recognition  of  the  obligation  resting  upon  the 
only  being  in  the  world  distinctively  characterized  by  the 
possession  of  mind  never  to  allow  influences  having  their 
sources  in  this  to  be  outweighed  by  those  having  their 
sources  merely  in  the  body?  If  a  man,  when  the  tempta- 
tions and  troubles  incident  to  physical  conditions  assail  his 
higher  nature,  treat  them  as  the  successful  mariner  does  the 
winds  and  waves  upon  an  ocean,  he  may  make  them  all 
instrumental  in  furthering  his  own  progress.     But,  if  he 


XVI  PREFACE 

act  otherwise,  if  he  do  nothing  to  resist  and  master  them, 
he  will  make  no  progress  and  probably  will  be  overwhelmed 
and  lost;  or  if  his  life  be  not  lost,  it  will  be  devoid  of  expe- 
riences that  would  have  made  it  much  better  worth  the  liv- 
ing. The  ocean  never  appears  so  grand  and  beautiful,  so 
exhilarating  and  enjoyable,  as  it  does  to  the  mariner  who  is 
conscious  of  holding  in  subjection  all  the  elements  of  a  storm 
and  of  using  them  to  speed  his  vessel  upon  its  course.  And 
so  with  the  spirit  of  man  when  confronted  by  material  ob- 
stacles. One  never  appreciates  the  grandeur  and  beauty  of 
the  physical  world  as  he  does  when  he  is  inspired  by  a  reali- 
zation of  the  importance  and  dignity  of  his  own  destiny  in 
view  of  the  number  and  magnitude  of  the  forces  that  are  at 
work  on  every  side  of  him,  and  which  it  is  his  privilege  to 
master,  and,  having  done  so,  to  turn  into  that  which  shall 
contribute  toward  his  own  psychical  advancement. 

The  ancient  astrologers,  accepting  what  they  considered 
to  be  the  testimony  of  their  own  consciousness,  adopted  the 
theory  that  every  man  is  at  the  center  of  the  universe. 
They  found  it  impossible  not  to  conceive  this  to  be  the  case, 
— not  to  conceive  of  the  universe  as  extending  as  far  below 
them  as  above  them,  as  far  to  one  side  of  them  as  to  the 
other  side.  Therefore  they  concluded  that  a  man's  mind 
which  constituted  his  psychical  self  was  influenced  not  only 
by  his  own  body  which  constituted  his  physical  self,  but  by 
everything  in  the  world  with  which  this  body  could  be 
physically  connected,  even  by  that  which  is  in  the  heavens 
above  the  world — in  other  words,  that  his  whole  character 
and  career  were  influenced  by  everything  in  the  physical 
universe  of  which  he  conceived  of  himself  as  the  center. 
This  ancient  astronomer,  whatever  may  be  thought  of  the 
details  of  his  theory,  had,  certainly,  a  general  conception 
that  was  suggestive  and  sublime.  Just  as  every  wheel 
whirling  in  a  flour  mill  exerts  an  influence  upon  every  gran- 
ule of  the  product  that  the  mill  turns  out,  so,  as  he  conceived, 
does  everything  that  moves  about  one's  individual  life, 
not  only  in  a  man's  physical  body,  but,  beyond  the  limits 
of  this,  everything  in  the  world,  everything  below,  above,  and 
about  the  world,  all  the  planets  in  their  courses,  have  an 
influence  in  shaping  the  destiny  of  even  the  least  of  the  liv- 
ing creatures  that  this  mighty  revolving  machinery  of  crea- 
tion is  bringing  to  perfection.  According  to  this  theory, 
which  does  not  differ  essentially  from  that  of  this  volume, 


PREFACE  xvil 

every  man  is  connected  with  everything ;  and  yet  everything 
can  affect  him  as  it  should  in  so  far  only  as  it  is  made  by  him 
to  serve  his  mental  and  spiritual  requirements.  But  to 
serve  these,  there  is  not  a  valley  too  wide,  a  mountain  too 
high,  a  star  too  bright,  nor  a  universe  too  vast.  There  is  a 
sense  in  which  all  these  are  but  partial  factors  of  the  environ- 
ment, the  investiture,  the  embodiment  of  his  single  human 
soul.  An  ethical  system  that  is  capable  of  including  in  its 
outlook  a  conception  like  this  ought  to  be  thought  broad 
enough  not  to  exclude  from  its  range  any  consideration 
needed  in  order  to  render  it  complete. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Preface       .         .         .         .  .         .         .        v 

CHAPTER  I 

Human  Experience  Started  and  Developed  from 
Desires  .......         i 

Purpose  and  Method  of  this  Essay — Man,  an  Embodiment  of 
Desire — This  Desire  Has  Two  Sources,  One  in  the  Body,  the 
Other  in  the  Mind — In  Both  Cases  the  Object  of  the  Desire 
Seems  to  be  to  Attain  Unity  between  Two  Persons — This 
Object  not  Fulfilled  through  the  Means  by  which  it  is  most 
Naturally  Sought — The  Ends  as  Well  as  Sources  of  the 
Desire  of  the  Body  and  of  the  Mind  Differ — Perception, 
Sensation,  and  Instinct  Logically  Precede  the  Practical 
Appeal  of  Desire  to  Consciousness — Meaning  of  Desire — 
Human  Desire  not  the  Same  as  Animal  Appetite — What 
is  Meant  by  Desires  of  the  Body  and  of  the  Mind — The 
Relation  that  Desire  Bears  to  Thought,  and  to  Feeling  or 
Emotion — Feeling  or  Emotion  does  not  Become  Desire  until 
Becoming  Active,  instead  of  Passive — Consciousness  Testi- 
fies that  Thought  as  well  as  Feeling  may  Influence  Desire — 
The  Same  Fact  Revealed  by  Observing  the  Normal  Action 
of  the  Will — And  by  the  Testimony  of  Conscience — Reason 
for  Beginning  this  Discussion  by  a  Consideration  of  Desires 
— Where  Desires  of  Body  and  of  Mind  Meet  in  Conscious- 
ness is  the  Best  Place  in  which  to  Study  that  Relationship 
between  Body  and  Mind  Needed  for  a  Knowledge  of  Ethics 
— Science  Confirms  the  Conception  that  Desires  are  at  the 
Basis  of  Human  Action — Connection  between  Physical 
Organs  and  Psychical  Experience — Automatic  and  Cerebro- 
spinal Nerves — The  Influence  of  the  Former  Precedes  that 
of  the  Latter — Reason  for  Associating  not  only  Lower  but 
Higher  Desires  with  the  Automatic  Nervous  System. 


XX  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  II 

PAGE 

Desires  of  Body  and  of  Mind  Often  Antagonistic 
and  not  Necessarily  Developed  from  one 
Another  .......       16 

Desires  of  the  Body  and  of  the  Mind — Superior  Claims,  when 
they  Differ,  of  the  Latter  Desires — Testimony  of  Science  as 
to  Different  Nerve-Sources  of  Each  Form  of  Desire — The 
Sources  in  Different  Parts  of  the  Brain — Desires  of  the  Body 
are  Accompanied  by  Consciousness  of  One's  own  Physical 
and  Personal  Individuality,  Tending  to  Self-indulgence; 
Desires  of  the  Mind  by  a  Consciousness  of  Things  External 
to  One,  Tending  to  Gratification  in  the  Non-Selfish — De- 
sires of  the  Body  End  in  Physical  Sensation;  those  of  the 
Mind  in  that  which  Develops  Rationality — And,  as  Con- 
trasted with  the  Brutal,  the  Humane — Summary  of  the 
Differences  between  the  Causes  and  Effects  of  Desires  of  the 
Body  and  of  the  Mind — Are  both  Forms  of  Desire  Developed 
from  the  Same  or  a  Similar  Source? — How  Desires  of  the 
Body  Develop — Why  they  Develop  in  this  Way — Fear  and 
Hate  Occasioned  by  Limits  Assigned  to  Bodily  Indulgence — 
How  Desires  of  the  Mind  Develop — Causing  Consciousness 
of  Sympathy,  Confidence,  and  Consideration  toward 
Others,  and  High  Attainments  of  Manhood — Yet  Bodily 
Desire  is  also  Needed  for  full  Development  of  Character — 
The  Two  Forms  of  Desire  must  be  Attributed  to  Two  Dif- 
ferent Sources — Attributing  them  thus  Seems  to  Violate 
Philosophical  Unity  of  Conception — Reference  to  an 
^Esthetic  Principle' — Analogy  between  Esthetics  and  Ethics 
— The  Connection  between  a  Mental  Cause  and  a  Material 
Effect  in  ^Esthetics — And  in  Ethics — Human  Intelligence 
Forms  the  Connection — This  Conception  Obviates  an  Ob- 
jection to  Evolutionism  as  Materialistic,  and  Accords  with  a 
Law  of  Nature — Manifest  in  Every  Department  of  Nature's 
Activities. 

CHAPTER  III 

The  Processes  of  Human  Intelligence  as  In- 
fluenced by  Desires  of  the  Body  and  of  the 
Mind 35 

Subject  of  the  Present  Chapter — Animal  and  Human  Traits — 


CONTENTS  xxi 

PAGE 

Methods  of  Conceiving  of  the  Influence  upon  Men  of  Lower 
and  of  Higher  Desire — Tabulation  of  Processes  of  Intelli- 
gence as  Developed  in  Connection  with  each  Form  of  Desire 
— Explanations — Mental  Desires  are  more  Influenced  by 
Thinking  than  Are  Bodily  Desires — Possible,  but  not  Actual, 
Separation  between  the  Psychical  Results  of  Desires  of  the 
Body  and  of  the  Mind — Dominance  of  the  Latter  through 
Influencing  the  Will — Desire  as  Affecting  the  Will — As 
Affecting  Lessons  Derived  from  Observation  and  Experience 
— From  Information — Higher  Desires  aside  from  Know- 
ledge Influential  in  Restraining  from  Vice — Lessons  from 
the  Reasoning  Faculties  as  Influenced  by  Conditions  of  De- 
sire— Recent  Public  Applications  of  this  Principle — Imag- 
ination as  Influenced  by  Conditions  of  Desire,  as  in  Ideals — 
Ideals  as  Results  of  Imagination — The  Possession  of  Ideals 
Differentiates  the  Mental,  Rational,  Non-Selfish,  and  Hu- 
mane from  the  Bodily,  Physical,  Selfish,  and  Brutal  Nature 
— The  Character  of  the  Ideal  Depends  upon  the  Contents  of 
the  Mind — Man  can  Live  in  a  World  of  Ideals — This  the 
Culminating  Effect  of  Thinking  as  Influenced  by  Higher 
Desire — Why  Ideals  are  Hampered  by  Material  Conditions 
— Why  Certain  Suggestions  from  this  Fact  may  be  Consoling 
and  Inspiring. 


CHAPTER  IV 

Man's  Consciousness  of  Conflict  Between  De- 
sires of  the  Body  and  of  the  Mind  .         .  51 

Recapitulation — Consciousness  of  Conflict  between  Desires 
sometimes  Slight — When  not  so,  the  Opposition  is  between 
the  Desires  of  the  Body  and  of  the  Mind — This  Fact  is  often 
Overlooked;  but  is  Fundamental — The  Fact  Accepted  by 
Many  Writers  who  have  not  Recognized  its  Full  Import — 
The  Consciousness  of  Conflict  between  Desires  of  the  Body 
and  of  the  Mind  Necessitates  Feelings  of  Unrest,  Discom- 
fort, etc. — Also  of  Obligation  to  Put  an  End  to  Them — And 
to  Use  all  the  Mental  Powers  in  Determining  and  Directing 
the  Methods  of  Ending  them — Nature  Prompts  every  Man 
because  he  is  a  Man  to  Subordinate  the  Bodily  to  the  Men- 
tal— In  the  Consciousness  of  a  Conflict  that  should  be 
Ended  thus  we  Become  Aware  of  what  is  Termed  Conscience. 


XXll  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  V 

PAGE 

Ancient  and  Medieval  Ethical  Theories    .         .       60 

Bearing  upon  our  Subject  of  the  History  of  Ethical  Theories — 
Chief  Differences  between  these  Concern  the  Source  and 
End  of  Obligation — Earliest  Moral  Conceptions  Based  upon 
a  Sense  of  One's  Relations  to  Others.  Institutionism  vs. 
Individualism — Use  and  Meaning  of  the  Word  Conscience 
in  Greece  and  Rome — Its  Use  at  the  Present  Time — Intu- 
ition vs.  Instinct — Promptings  of  both  Attributed  to  Di- 
vinity— Other  Moral  Theories,  Essentially  the  same  in 
Ancient  and  in  Modern  Times.  Reason  for  this — Con- 
temporaneous Appearance  in  Greece  of  those  Ascribing  the 
Source  of  Morality  to  Thinking  and  to  Feeling;  to  Reason 
and  to  Experiences  of  Pleasure  and  Pain — Criticisms  of  both 
Theories— Greek  Philosophers  who  Combined  both — The 
Functional  School,  with  Suggestions  of  Teleological  and 
Utilitarian  Methods — Eudaimonism — The  Cynic  and  Stoic 
Schools — The  Sophist,  Cyrenaic,  and  Epicurean  Schools — 
Roman  Stoics  and  Epicureans — Early  Christian  Ethical 
Theories — The  Mystics. 

CHAPTER  VI 

Modern  Ethical  Theories:  Institutionism,  Em- 
piricism, and  Rational,  Emotive,  and  Percep- 
tive Intuitionism 77 

Lord  Bacon's  Inductive  Philosophy — Institutionism  of  Hobbes — 
Empiricism  of  Locke  and  his  Followers — Rational  and 
Innate  Recognition  of  Right  and  Wrong — Critical  Phi- 
losophy of  Kant — His  Distinction  between  the  Noumenal 
and  the  Phenomenal — Distinction  between  Kant's  Intuitive 
Theory  and  the  Innate  Theory  of  the  English  Rational 
School — Connection  between  the  View  of  Kant  and  that  of 
Leibnitz  and  Schopenhauer — Analogy  that  which  Connects 
Mind  and  Matter — Practical  Recognition  of  this  Fact  by 
People  who  are  not  Philosophers,  and  its  Results — Connec- 
tion between  the  Theories  of  Kant  and  the  Idealism  of 
Hegel — Connection  between  Kant's  Theories  and  the  De- 
mands of  Practical  Morality — Connection  between  Hegel's 
Idealism  and  the  Expression  of  the  Ideal  of  Individuals — 
Outward  Government  Control  Substituted  by  Hegel  for 
Inward  Self-control — Nietzsche's  Emphasis  upon  Forceful 


CONTENTS  xxm 

PAGE 

Control,  ana  its  Effects  upon  Public  Morals — Institutionism 
Cannot  Meet  all  the  Requirements  of  Morality — Recent 
Acceptance  by  Modern  Writers  of  Institutional  Principles — 
Influence  of  Kant  upon  Later  Rational  Intuitionism — The 
Voice  of  God  in  Man — Moral-sense  or  Emotional  Intuition- 
ism of  Shaftesbury — Perceptional  Intuitionism  of  Butler — 
Influence  on  Modern  Thought  of  Shaftesbury  and  Butler. 

CHAPTER  VII 

Modern  Ethical  Theories  Continued:  Teleo- 
logical,  Utilitarian,  Evolutionary,  and  Self- 
realization  Theories      94 

Teleological  Theory — Association  with  it  of  the  Functional 
Theory,  or  Fitness — Connection  between  Fitness  and  Re- 
sults of  Experience — Hedonism  and  Eudaimonism  of  Bent- 
ham — Utilitarianism — Its  Accord  with  Pragmatism  and 
Common  Sense — Evolutionism  and  Energism — Intuitions 
and  Instincts  as  Results  of  Experience  and  Inheritance — 
As  a  priori  Natural  Impulses — What  Evolutionism  Leaves 
Unsolved — The  Self-Realization  Theory  versus  Evolution- 
ary Materialism — A  Recognition  of  the  Importance  of  Non- 
selfish  as  Contrasted  with  Selfish  Motives — Modern  De- 
velopment of  the  Spiritual  Ideal  in  Self -Realization — This 
Conception  not  new,  but  widely  Accepted  only  in  our 
Time — Parallelism  between  it,  and  the  Acceptance  by 
Pragmatism  of  the  Ideal  as  the  True — High  Moral  Intent  of 
this  Conception;  but  not  Philosophically  Derived — Nor 
Practically  Satisfactory. 

CHAPTER  VIII 

Morality  Attributed  to  Thinking,  Feeling,  or 
Both,  Whether  Through  Intuition.  Instinct, 
Reasoning,  or  Observing        .         .         .         .104 

Summary  of  our  Review  of  Ethical  Theories — The  Attributing 
of  Right  Conduct  to  Thinking,  through  Intuition  or  Reason- 
ing— How  this  Fails  to  Accord  with  the  Testimony  of  Con- 
sciousness— Moral  Influence  of  Thinking  alone  upon  Prac- 
tical Results — Upon  Philosophic  Theory — The  Attributing 
of  Right  Conduct  to  Feeling  whether  Resulting  from  Instinct 


XXIV  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

or  Experience — Arguments  for  and  against  this  Conception 
— Its  Influence  upon  Practical  Results — Upon  Philosophic 
Theory — The  Attributing  of  Right  Conduct  to  Thinking 
and  Feeling  in  Combination — The  Necessary  Conditions 
underlying  this  Conception. 


CHAPTER  IX 

Conscience,  a  Consciousness  of  Conflict  Be- 
tween Desires  of  the  Body  and  of  the  Mind  .     1 1 1 

Thinking  and  Feeling  are  Both  United  in  Human  Desire — 
How  Desires  of  the  Mind  can  be  Made  to  Seem  Authori- 
tative— The  Facts  Fit  the  Ordinary  Conception  of  the 
Meaning  of  Conscience — The  Function  Assigned  to  Con- 
science here  Is  not  Unimportant — Can  this  Conception  of 
it  Include  all  the  Requirements  of  Conscience? — Conscience 
Is  Primarily  Felt  Within — Never  Experienced  Except  in 
Connection  with  a  Conflict  between  Higher  and  Lower  De- 
sires— Even  the  Perversions  of  Conscience  Show  this — This 
Conception  of  Conscience  Follows  Logically  upon  Modern 
Theories  Concerning  the  Subject — The  Conception  can  be 
Reconciled  with  other  Functions  of  Conscience — Conscience 
as  Related  to  the  Choice  of  an  End  toward  which  Obligation 
Inclines — Many  Ethical  Theories  not  Sufficiently  Compre- 
hensive and  Fundamental — Mental  Control  as  an  Agency 
in  the  Stimulating  of  Mental  Activity — In  the  Developing 
of  Intelligence — In  the  Recognizing  of  Spiritual  Com- 
munality — Summary  of  the  View  of  Conscience  here  Pre- 
sented— The  Importance  of  Using  all  the  Possibilities  of 
Mind  to  Prevent,  in  Case  of  Conflict  with  Bodily  Influences, 
its  Being  Outweighed  by  them — Difference  between  the 
Conception  of  Conscience  Presented  in  these  Pages  and 
other  Somewhat  Similar  Conceptions. 


CHAPTER  X 

Desires  of  the  Mind  Should  not  Suppress,  but 
Subordinate,  Desires  of  the  Body  .         .         .     123 

The  Difficulty  of  Understanding  or  Applying  the  Principles  Un- 
folded in  the  Preceding  Chapters — Two  Possible  Methods  of 
Doing  this — The  Method  of  Suppressing  Physical  Desires, 


CONTENTS  xxv 

PAGE 

or  Asceticism — Asceticism  Wrong  in  Theory — Gratifying 
Physical  Desire  is  Right — Asceticism  Detrimental  in  Prac- 
tice— Unnecessary  as  a  Preventive  of  Evil — Illustrations — 
Easy  Solutions  of  Moral  Problems  not  the  most  Satisfactory 
— Modern  Efforts  to  Create  Right  Opinions  on  this  Sub- 
ject— Bodily  Desire  should  be  Kept  Subordinate — Impor- 
tance of  Mental  Desire — But  not  to  be  Indulged  to  the 
Exclusion  of  Bodily  Desire — The  Greek  Conception  of 
Moderation — Neither  Bodily  nor  Mental  Desire  Expressive 
of  all  of  Nature's  Demands — When  these  Demands  are  not 
Fulfilled,  any  Desire  may  Become  Overreaching — Over- 
reaching Desires  Tend  to  Irrationality  and  Selfishness — 
Even  though  Primarily  Mental — In  Beings  both  Bodily  and 
Mental,  the  Desire  of  the  One  Needs  to  be  Balanced  against 
that  of  the  Other — Balance  as  an  Agency  in  Keeping  Up- 
right— Complexity  of  the  Problem  of  Morality — The  Prob- 
lem Solved  by  Mental  Action  that  is  both  Immediate  and 
Deliberative — Adaptation  to  this  Purpose  of  the  Principle 
Underlying  what  is  Termed  Ethical  Harmony. 


CHAPTER  XI 

Analogies  Between  Harmony  in  Esthetics  and 
in  Ethics 141 

The  Term  Harmony  is  often  Applied  to  Moral  Conditions — 
Similarity  of  the  Influences  Tending  to  ^Esthetic  and  to 
Ethical  Harmony — Explanation  of  Arrangements  Producing 
^Esthetic  Harmony — Art- Composition,  Beauty,  and  Moral 
Character  all  Connected  with  Subordinating  the  Bodily  or 
Material  to  the  Mental  or  Rational — This  Produces,  First, 
an  Effect  of  Order — Other  Effects  thus  Produced — Other 
Analogies — Embodiment  of  Ideals — Harmony  is  Produced 
by  Arrangement,  not  Suppression — It  Affects  Sensation 
aside  from  the  Understanding — Can  be  Recognized  by 
Ordinary  Human  Intelligence — By  Natural  Inference — 
Studying  the  Subject  Increases  Ability  to  Apply  it — Its 
Principles  Applicable  to  Courses  of  Action  as  well  as  to 
Specific  Acts — Effects  of  Ethical  Harmony  between  Desires, 
as  of  ^Esthetic  Harmony  between  Methods,  Produced  by 
Influences  Essentially  Non-selfish — The  Results  of  Ethical 
Harmony  Conform  to  every  Requirement  of  Sociology  and 
Religion  as  well  as  of  Rationality. 


xxvi  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  XII 

PAGE 

Desires  of  the  Mind  and  of  the  Body  as  In- 
fluenced by  Observation,  Experience,  and 
Information  .         .         .         .         .         .  155 

Recapitulation — Practical  Applications  of  our  Subject  to  be 
Considered  First  in  their  General  Relations  to  all  Actions — 
Effort  Needed  in  Order  to  Strengthen  the  Desires  of  the 
Mind — That  which  Appeals  to  the  Mind  as  Desirable — It  is 
Ascertained  through  Observation,  Experiment,  and  Informa- 
tion— Observation  as  Influencing  Imitation — Training  Im- 
parted by  Environment — Through  Effects  of  which  One 
is  not  Conscious — Influence  of  Suggestion — Strongest  when 
its  Results  Appear  Desirable  in  Themselves  or  so  because 
Presented  by  One  Personally  Admired — Need  of  Caution  in 
Choosing  Associations — Opportunities  for  Influence  Need 
to  be  Appropriated — Mistakes  of  Asceticism — Puritanism — 
Its  Fundamental  Conception — That  which  is  Desirable  as 
Ascertained  through  Experiment — Actions  Tend  to  Repeat 
Themselves — Especially  Actions  Involving  Morality — 
Guilt  Determined  by  Quality  not  Quantity  of  Action — Mold- 
ing Character  by  Causing  Repetitions  of  Actions — Not  Suc- 
cessful when  Undesirable  Acts  are  Repeated — That  which  is 
Desirable  as  Ascertained  through  Information — The  Most 
Intelligent  not  the  Most  Moral — Moral  Effects  Depend 
upon  the  Influence  Exerted  upon  Desire — And  upon  the 
Unconscious  as  well  as  Conscious  Mind — What  Determines 
the  Moral  Effects  of  Information — Mistakes  of  Modern 
Methods  of  Imparting  Information;  Newspapers — Novels, 
Plays,  and  Moving  Pictures — Moral  Studies  in  Schools — 
Influences  to  Inspire  Higher  Desire  Should  Accompany 
the  Moral  Effects  of  Information — Mistakes  of  Modern 
Methods  of  Imparting  Information;  Newspapers — Novels, 
Plays,  and  Moving  Pictures — Moral  Studies  in  Schools — 
Influences  to  Inspire  Higher  Desire  Should  Accompany 
Information. 

CHAPTER  XIII 

Keeping  the  Mind's  Desires  Uppermost  in  Court- 
ship and  Marriage  .         .         .         .         .172 

The  Family  has  Bodily  and  Mental  Relations  to  the  Development 
of  Character — The  Bodily  should  not  be  Emphasized  Un- 


CONTENTS  xxvii 

PAGE 

duly,  though  Public  Sentiment  against  Marrying  Physical 
Degenerates  is  Healthful — Mental  Requirements  should 
also  be  Regarded,  and  Anticipated  in  Education — Court- 
ship, Friendship,  and  Love — The  Qualities  Attracting  those 
who  Fall  in  Love — Risks  Attending  Merely  Bodily  or 
Merely  Mental  Attraction — Methods  of  Avoiding  these 
Risks — Effects  of  Sentimentality,  as  in  Novels,  etc.,  as 
Contrasted  with  Rationality,  Especially  as  Exerted  by 
Parents —  The  Cure  for  Unsatisfactory  Marriage — Injurious 
Representations  of  much  Modern  Literature — Evils 
Wrought  by  Forbidding  all  Divorce — Good  Accomplished 
by  Resisting  Tendencies  to  it,  in  Order  to  Balance  the 
Bodily  by  the  Mental. 

CHAPTER  XIV 

Keeping  the  Mind's  Desires  Uppermost  in  Family 
Training 182 

The  Training  of  the  Child  the  Chief  Work  of  the  Family- 
Necessity  of  Influencing  the  Child's  Desires  through  Love 
for  Him — Through  Hope  for  Him — Through  Faith  in  Him — 
Children  Associate  Mystery  with  the  Prompting  of  Con- 
science— Importance  of  Developing  their  Tendencies  to 
Reverence  and  Aspiration — Devotion,  and  Religious  Sug- 
gestion in  Family  Life — Cultivation  among  the  Children 
of  Respect,  Obedience,  and  a  Sense  of  Duty — Other  Traits, 
the  Beginnings  of  which  can  be  Cultivated  in  Childhood — 
The  Chief  Aim  should  be  the  Cultivation  of  Mental  Desires 
which  Chastisement  alone  Cannot  Accomplish — Self-control 
should  be  Developed — Traits  Connected  with  Truthfulness 
that  Need  Particular  Emphasis  in  Childhood — Traits  Con- 
nected with  Purity — Importance  of  Parents'  Gaining  and 
Keeping  their  Children's  Confidence — The  Effects  of  this 
upon  both  Morals  and  Manners. 

CHAPTER  XV 

Keeping  the  Mind's  Desires  Uppermost  in  School 
Training 194 

Education  Means  more  than  an  Effect  Produced  upon  the  Under- 
standing— The  School  should  Impart,  if  not  Religious  In- 
struction, at  Least  a  Religious  Spirit — Use  of  Placards 
Enjoining    Morality — Schools   should   Strengthen   Mental 


xxvm  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

and  Thoughtful  Tendencies — Instruction  should  be  Adapted 
to  both  Bodily  and  Mental  Requirements — Differences  in 
the  Methods  of  Appealing  to  Each  Requirement — A  Mistake 
to  Suppose  Mental  Desire  Influenced  only  through  Bodily 
Desire — Educational  Methods  Injured  by  this  Supposition — 
Study  should  be  Made  not  Easy  but  Interesting — Two  Ways 
of  Doing  this — Necessity  of  the  Student's  having  Love  for 
his  Work — Drill  Made  Pleasant — Class-room  Competition — 
Literary  and  Athletic  Competitions — Athletics  Sometimes 
Overrated — Large  Schools  and  the  Graded  System — Co- 
education— Social,  Scholarly,  and  Ethical  Effects  of  the 
System — Young  People  Need  Instruction  by  those  of  their 
Own  Sex. 

CHAPTER  XVI 

Keeping  the  Mind's  Desires  Uppermost  in  the 

General  Relations  of  Society         .         .         .     206 

Self-Control  Needed  by  Members  of  Society;  not  Control  of 
Other  People — Mistakes  with  Reference  to  these  Subjects — 
The  Mature  Require  Different  Treatment  from  the  Im- 
mature— Too  Strait-laced  People  Lacking  in  Moral  In- 
fluence— Good  Influence  of  Some  Parents  because  not 
Strait-laced — To  Act  Morally,  Mature  Minds  sometimes 
Need  to  Act  Independently — Reverence,  Respect,  Obe- 
dience, Humility — Exerting  Public  Influence  on  the  Side 
of  the  Mental — Importance  of  Community  Influence  upon 
Farm  Life — Public  Spirit — Frankness  and  Truthfulness — 
Cases  in  which  these  may  Work  Harm — Problems  of  the 
Kind  Solved  by  Balancing  Mind  against  Body — Why  this 
Method  Does  no  Harm — Promises — Contracts — Purity, 
Cleanliness,  Decency,  and  Chastity — Reasons  for  these — 
Chastity  Common,  and  Honored  among  Men,  though  for 
Business  Reasons  Less  Emphasized  than  Integrity — Chas- 
tity among  Women — Moral  Obligations  Rest  upon  All — 
Virtue  its  Own  Reward. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

Keeping  the  Mind's  Desires  Uppermost  in  Social 
Customs  and  Habits         .         .         .         .         .218 

Matters  of  Habit  and  Manner  not  mentally  Unimportant — 


CONTENTS  xxix 


PAGii 


Mental  Influence  Exerted  over  Bodily  Appetite — Selection 
of  Food — Cooking  and  Seasoning  Food — The  Use  of  those 
Stimulants  that  are  Injurious  only  to  Self — Tobacco — 
Stimulants  Injurious  also  to  Other  People,  like  Intoxicating 
Drinks  and  Opiates — Restricting  their  Use  through  Circu- 
lation of  Information  Concerning  their  Effects — Regulating 
their  Use  by  Law — Prohibiting  it  altogether — Objections 
Made  to  Prohibition — Those  with  the  Same  Moral  Aims 
do  not  always  Agree  with  Reference  to  the  Means  of  Attain- 
ing them — Law  Applied  by  Using  Bodily  Force  can  never 
Exert  any  but  Indirect  Influence  upon  Mental  Results — 
However  wisely  Framed,  Law  can  never  be  Substituted  for 
Mental  Self-control. 

CHAPTER  XVIII 

Keeping  the  Mind's  Desires  Uppermost  in  Social 
Surroundings  and  Pleasures  .         .         .     226 

Clothing — An  Agency  for  Mental  Expression — Application  of 
this  Principle  to  Forms  of  Work  and  Art — Under-dressing 
in  Society — Over-dressing — Bodily  or  Mental  Desires  as 
Shown  in  Ostentatious  Residences — Money  Wisely  Spent  to 
Gratify  Public-spirited  Mental  Desire — Bodily  vs.  Mental 
Desire,  as  Shown  in  Feasting — In  Dancing — In  Card-play- 
ing; why  Gambling  and  Betting  are  Wrong — Evil  Effects 
Connected  with  them  and  Other  Pastimes — Forms  of  Enjoy- 
ment in  which  One  is  Entertained  by  Others — Morality  and 
Art — The  Kind  of  Art  that  One  should  Patronize — Frivolous 
and  Superficial  Art — Every  Part  of  the  Human  Form  can 
Become  a  Vehicle  for  Mental  Expression — Different  Effects 
of  the  Actual  Human  Form  and  of  its  Representations  in 
Art — This  Difference  Overlooked — Disregard  of  Proprieties 
in  Moving  Pictures  and  Theatricals — Disregard  and  Dis- 
tortion of  Truth  for  Artistic  Effects  in  Dramas  and  Novels. 

CHAPTER  XIX 

Keeping  the  Mind's  Desires  Uppermost  in  Com- 
mercial Relations  Between  Buyers  and 
Sellers 241 

Importance  of  Business — Of  Developing  the  Traits  of  Character 
Needed  for  Success  in  it — How  Property  may  be  Acquired — 


XXX  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Money  as  a  Medium  of  Exchange — The  Object  of  Business 
Is  to  Exchange  what  One  Has  for  what  Another  Has — Can 
be  Conducted  in  Fulfillment  of  Lower  or  of  Higher  Desire — 
Civilization  the  Result  of  the  Latter,  Giving  Men  Confi- 
dence in  One  Another — Honesty  Proved  the  Best  Policy  by 
People  who  Have  Actually  been  Honest — Riches  not  usually 
the  Result  of  Extortion  but  of  Diligence,  Self-Denial,  and 
Saving — Examples — Successful  Men  usually  Keep  the 
Bodily  Outweighed  by  the  Mental — Lack  of  Success  often 
Due  to  Outside  Circumstances — Often  Due  to  Men's  Own 
Unacknowledged  Deficiencies — The  highly  Rational  and 
Humane  Man  Studies  and  Gives  in  Exchange  what  Others 
Need  and  Want — Large  Services  of  this  Kind  Justly  Re- 
ceive Large  Recompense — Injurious  Lack  of  Stimulus  to 
Effort  where  this  Principle  is  not  Practiced  or  Accepted — 
Duty  of  the  Individual  to  Subordinate  his  Own  Interests  to 
those  of  the  Community. 

CHAPTER  XX 

Keeping  the  Mind's  Desires  Uppermost  in  In- 
dustrial Relations  Between  Employers  and 
Employees 252 

Mental  Desire  as  Manifested  in  Relations  between  Employers  and 
Employees — Once  the  Former  Used,  and  the  Latter  Obeyed 
Force  alone,  as  if  each  Possessed  only  a  Physical  Nature — 
Both  can  best  Further  One  Another's  Interests  by  Acting 
out  the  Promptings  of  the  Mental  Nature — Former  and 
Present  Relations  between  Employers  and  Employees — ■ 
Right  Relations  between  the  two  Fundamentally  Connected 
with  that  which  Determines  Moral  Character — Both  Parties 
Ignore  this  Fact — When  they  Perceive  and  Act  upon  it,  the 
Labor  Problem  will  be  Solved — Demands  of  Labor  in 
England — Cannot  Accomplish  All  that  is  Required — In- 
dustrial Liberty  as  Applied  to  our  Own  Country — Different 
Conceptions  of  it — Why  the  Granting  of  it  is  Opposed — 
How  it  might  be  Granted — And  Increase  Industrial  Effi- 
ciency— Would  be  better  Done  by  Contract  than  by  Gov- 
ernment Action — Other  Mental  Methods  that  can  be  Used 
by  Employers — Same  Principles  Applied  to  Employees — 
The  Importance  of  Enjoying  One's  Work — The  Cheerful 
and  Interested  Worker  is  the  One  who  Receives  Promotion — 


CONTENTS  xxxi 

PAGE 

The  Labor  Agitator  Urging  the  Use  of  Force  is  often  the 
Laborers'  Worst  Enemy — Mental  Influence,  not  Physical 
Force,  the  Means  of  Securing  Permanently  Beneficial  Re- 
sults. 

CHAPTER  XXI 

Keeping  the  Mind's  Desires  Uppermost  in  Forms 
of  Government  :  Autocracy  and  Democracy     .     267 

Citizenship  Implies  a  Possession  of  Mentality — The  Individual 
not  usually  Responsible  for  the  Form  of  Government  by 
which  he  is  Ruled — Professional  Revolutionists — When 
Revolution  is  Justified — Political  Restlessness  of  the  Present 
Age — All  Beneficial  Progress  in  Government  Methods  has 
Gradually  Subordinated  Physical  to  Mental  Influence — 
Any  Form  of  Government  may  be  so  Administered  as  to 
Further  the  Physical  rather  than  the  Mental — Different 
ways  of  Classifying  Forms  of  Government:  a  Monarchy 
and  a  Republic — Autocracy  and  Democracy — Democracy  in 
Great  Britain — The  United  States  is  a  Constitutional  and 
Representative  Democracy — Justice  and  Liberty  as  Secured 
through  Constitutional  Limitations — Through  Represen- 
tative Limitations — Danger  of  our  Losing  Faith  in  these 
Limitations — As  Applied  to  the  Constitutional  System — 
As  Applied  to  the  Representative  System — Nominating 
Candidates  in  a  Primary  Election — Framing  and  Enacting 
Laws  by  Popular  Vote — Cure  for  Ills  of  Democracy  is  not 
More  Democracy:  Experience  of  Athens  and  Rome — The 
Theory  of  the  Divine  Right  of  Kings  Paralleled  by  that  of 
the  Divine  Right  of  the  Majority — Kings  and  Majorities  not 
Infallible — Government  Right  to  Limit  Suffrage — Object  of 
Suffrage  is  to  Protect  the  Rights  of  the  Individual  Citizen — 
These  Rights  sometimes  also  need  Protection  from  Ignorant 
Voters  who,  as  Voters,  are  also  Rulers — Methods  of  Securing 
this  Protection — These  Methods  as  Applied  to  Questions 
needing  Expert  Decision — Service  Suffrage — Suffrage  not 
the  Best  Corrective  for  all  Moral  Abuses — Failure  of  Un- 
limited Manhood  Suffrage  as  Applied  to  the  American 
Emancipated  Slaves — Mental  Reform  does  not  always 
Need  Physical  Assistance — False  Methods  of  Some  Re- 
formers— History  of  the  Emancipation  of  the  American 
Slaves — Patronage  as  Related  to  Republican  Government. 


xxxil  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  XXII 

PAGE 

Keeping  the  Mind's  Desires  Uppermost  in  the 
Framing  and  Administering  of  Government 
Laws      ........     292 

Laws  Promote  Morality  when  they  Prevent  Individuals  from 
Interfering  with  Others'  Mental  or  Rational  Development — 
Liberty  as  Applied  to  Religion — To  Education — To  Social 
and  Political  Position — To  Business  Conditions  and  Sur- 
roundings— Tendency  toward  Government  Interference  as 
Illustrated  from  Experience  of  Railways — Results  of  Gov- 
ernment Oversight  and  Ownership — Reliance  upon  Physical 
not  Rational  Influence — Arbitration,  and  Methods  of  Evad- 
ing its  Intended  Effects — Physical  rather  than  Rational 
Influence  Dominant  in  Making  Regulations  with  Reference 
to  Hours  of  Labor — To  Wages — To  Allowing  Sons  to  Fol- 
low their  Fathers'  Trade,  or  any  Trade  in  which  they  Need 
to  Experiment — Laws  Interfering  with  both  Laborers  and 
Leaders  in  Industry — Laws  against  Combination  and  in 
Favor  of  Competition — Self-seeking  Results  in  Business 
Cannot  be  Corrected  by  Laws  Changing  Physical  Conditions 
— Influence  of  Capitalists  in  Favor  of  Democracy  in  Govern- 
ment— Efforts  of  Capitalists  for  the  Welfare  of  their  Employ- 
ees— For  Agricultural  Laborers — Such  Capitalists  are  Needed 
and  should  be  Honored — False  Views  of  Human  Equality  Fail 
to  Recognize  this  Fact — Equality  Desirable  because  it  Brings 
Happiness — and  this  is  often  Mental — Logical  Results  of 
False  Views  as  Embodied  in  Socialism  and  Anarchism — 
The  Threatened  Decay  of  Democracy  in  our  Own  Times — 
It  is  sometimes  Wisest  for  One  to  Accept  the  Existing  Con- 
ditions of  Life,  and  Make  the  Best  of  Them. 

CHAPTER  XXIII 

Keeping  the  Mind's  Desires  Uppermost  in  Stim- 
ulation by  the  Government  of  Individual 
Initiative  and  Leadership      .         .         .         .315 

The  Duty  of  Government  to  Afford  Men  Opportunities  to  Give 
Expression  to  the  Desires  of  the  Mind — Application  of  this 
Principle  to  Levying  Taxes — Developing  Enterprise — 
Granting  of  Patents,  Copyrights,  and  Franchises — To 
Rights  Obtained  by  Purchase  or  Inheritance — Physical  and 


CONTENTS  xxxiii 

PAGE 

Mental  Desires  for  One's  Heirs — Contributions  to  Art, 
Science,  and  Life  by  the  Inheritors  of  a  Small  Competence — 
Demoralizing  Effects  upon  a  Country  of  Thinkers  who  Work 
only  for  Pay — Menace  to  Public  Welfare  of  those  Inheriting 
Great  Wealth — The  Law  against  Entail — Concerning  the 
Principle  Underlying  a  Graded  Inheritance  Tax — Good 
Government  Secures  for  Each  Individual  Liberty  to  Think 
and  to  Act  without  Undue  Interference — To  Governments 
of  this  Kind,  most  Modern  Progress  is  Attributable — Also 
Moral,  as  well  as  Mental  Development — Different  Lessons 
Drawn  from  Certain  Occurrences  Connected  with  the  Recent 
War — Democracy  as  a  Remedy  for  the  Causes  of  the  War — 
A  League  or  External  Organization  of  Democratic  Nations 
to  enforce  Peace — A  Practical  Ethical  Reference  that  can 
Fit  either  the  Possibility  or  the  Impossibility  of  Realizing, 
at  Present,  the  Ideals  Underlying  such  Methods — Con- 
clusion 

Index  ........     331 


Ethics   and   Natural    Law 


CHAPTER    I 

HUMAN  EXPERIENCE  STARTED  AND  DEVELOPED  FROM  DESIRES 


Purpose  and  Method  of  this  Essay — Man,  an  Embodiment  of  Desire — 
This  Desire  has  Two  Sources,  One  in  the  Body,  the  Other  in  the 
Mind — In  Both  Cases  the  Object  of  the  Desire  Seems  to  be  to  Attain 
Unity  between  Two  Persons — This  Object  not  Fulfilled  through  the 
Means  by  which  it  is  most  Naturally  Sought — The  Ends  as  Well  as 
Sources  of  the  Desire  of  the  Body  and  of  the  Mind  Differ — Per- 
ception, Sensation,  and  Instinct  Logically  Precede  the  Practical  Ap- 
peal of  Desire  to  Consciousness — Meaning  of  Desire — Human  De- 
sire not  the  Same  as  Animal  Appetite — What  is  Meant  by  Desires 
of  the  Body  and  of  the  Mind — The  Relation  that  Desire  Bears  to 
Thought,  and  to  Feeling  or  Emotion — Feeling  or  Emotion  does  not 
Become  Desire  until  Becoming  Active,  instead  of  Passive — Con- 
sciousness Testifies  that  Thought  as  well  as  Feeling  may  Influence 
Desire — The  Same  Fact  Revealed  by  Observing  the  Normal  Action 
of  the  Will — And  by  the  Testimony  of  Conscience — Reason  for 
Beginning  this  Discussion  by  a  Consideration  of  Desires — Where 
Desires  of  Body  and  of  Mind  Meet  in  Consciousness  is  the  Best 
Place  in  which  to  Study  that  Relationship  between  Body  and 
Mind  Needed  for  a  Knowledge  of  Ethics — Science  Confirms  the 
Conception  that  Desires  are  at  the  Basis  of  Human  Action — Con- 
nection between  Physical  Organs  and  Psychical  Experience — Auto- 
matic and  Cerebro-Spinal  Nerves — The  Influence  of  the  Former 
Precedes  that  of  the  Latter — Reason  for  Associating  not  only  Lower 
but  Higher  Desires  with  the  Automatic  Nervous  System. 

WHEN  studying  man,  it  is  natural  to  start  where  hie 
history  begins.  Of  this  beginning,  revelation, 
tradition,  legend,  and  history  have  tried  to  in- 
form us.  They  may  have  given  us  truth;  but  we  can  be 
certain  that  it  is  this,  so  far  only  as,  in  some  way,  we  have 


2  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

discovered  it  for  ourselves.  The  fact  that  a  wise  man  pays 
heed  to  voices  calling  from  an  unseen  distance,  does  not 
relieve  him,  when  following  the  path  that  leads  to  it,  from 
using  his  own  intelligence.  He  feels  that  information  im- 
parted by  others  can  never  be  as  trustworthy  as  knowledge 
obtained  by  himself.  A  similar  conception,  too,  influences 
his  attitude  toward  what  he  learns  subsequently.  He  can- 
not admit  that  any  mental  process  can  develop  knowledge 
from  that  which  does  not  start  with  it.  He  would  consider 
a  tower  built  upon  quicksand  as  firmly  based  as  thought  in- 
ferred from  mere  hearsay.  In  this  essay,  an  endeavor  will 
be  made  to  ground  what  is  said  upon  personal,  and,  in  this 
sense,  actual  knowledge; — in  other  words,  to  show,  if  pos- 
sible, that  a  system  of  ethics  can  be  constructed  upon  what 
may  be  claimed  to  be  a  strictly  rational  basis. 

Personally  or  actually,  none  of  us  know  anything  about 
the  beginning  of  human  life,  in  so  far  as  by  this  we  mean 
the  origin  of  mankind.  At  best,  we  can  do  no  more  than 
draw  inferences  with  reference  to  the  subject.  But  we  all 
know  a  good  deal  about  the  origin  of  a  man.  He  is  a  result 
of  that  tendency  in  human  nature  which  causes  a  man  and 
a  woman  to  mate  and  this  tendency  is  owing  to  that  which, 
in  both  of  them,  may  be  termed  desire.  Man  is  a  living 
embodiment  of  this  desire.  If  we  can  find  out  exactly  what 
the  desire  is — what  are  its  constituent  elements — we  may  do 
something  in  the  direction  of  solving  the  questions  with 
reference  to  what  a  man  is,  and  what,  in  this  world,  is,  or 
should  be,  expected  of  him. 

The  desire  has,  apparently,  two  sources.  In  part,  the 
body  occasions  it.  Its  rudiments,  at  least,  are  in  the 
lower  animals  among  whom  it  performs  the  important  func- 
tion of  promoting  the  continuance  of  life  in  successive  gen- 
erations. But  the  desire  is  traceable  in  part  also  to  the 
mind.  Even  among  the  lower  animals,  among  birds  and 
not  frequently,  among  insects,  the  gratification  of  it  is 
preceded  and  accompanied  by  a  sort  of  courtship  that  sug- 
gests more  or  less  exercise  of  as  much  mental  potentiality 
as  they  may  be  supposed  to  possess.  Among  human  beings 
these  mental  influences  are  still  more  in  evidence ;  and  few 
thinkers  deny  that,  in  importance,  they  outrank  the  bodily. 
All  men,  it  is  asserted,  are  mentally  conscious  that,  when 
they  are  entirely  separated  from  their  fellows,  they  are  not 
fulfilling  all  the  demands  of  their  nature;  and,  it  is  said  that 


DESIRES  OF  THE  BODY  AND  THE  MIND  3 

this  consciousness  alone  is  sufficient  to  cause  them  to  seek 
to  form  such  unions  with  others  as,  in  accordance  with 
their  physical  constitutions  and  the  customs  of  society,  are 
afforded  in  marriage. 

From  the  beginning  of  courtship  to  the  consummation  of 
marriage,  the  one  underlying  motive,  according  to  some,  is 
this  desire  on  the  part  of  one  individual  to  come  into  union 
with  another  individual.  For  what  other  reason,  it  is  asked, 
do  two  people  that  are,  as  men  say,  in  love,  touch  hands, 
caress,  clasp,  and  kiss  one  another?  For  what  else  do  they 
try  to  unburden  their  minds  so  completely  that,  apparently, 
nothing  but  the  hollowness  left  behind  can  afford  a  reason- 
able excuse  for  the  emptiness  of  their  phraseology  ?  What 
are  they  endeavoring  to  do  but  to  get  nearer  together,  so 
that,  if  possible,  they  may  become  conscious  of  being  at  one? 
And  what  possible  result  could,  at  the  time,  seem  to  them 
more  inspiring  to  anticipation  than  the  achievement  of  this 
purpose  ? 

Nov/  let  us  notice  a  somewhat  unexpected  anomaly. 
This  is  the  fact  that  this  desire  for  union  is  never  fulfilled  by 
means  of  the  agency  through  which,  apparently,  nature  first 
prompts  one  to  seek  it.  Mental  union,  whether  we  consider 
this  to  be  that  of  thought  or  of  intention  does  not  necessarily 
result  from  bodily  union  such  as  is  brought  about  by  mar- 
riage. This  usually  leads  merely  to  fresh  exemplifications 
of  disunion;  i.  e.}  to  the  conception  and  birth  of  more  in- 
dividuals conscious  of  separation  from  their  fellows.  Just 
when  the  most  influential  desire  of  which,  perhaps,  a  man  is 
ever  conscious  is  upon  the  threshold  of  realization,  nature, 
as  if  to  trick  and  cheat  him,  checks  that  which  might  insure 
a  full  consummation  of  his  wish,  and  drives  him  back  to 
conditions  that  have  been  changed  in  only  one  regard.  The 
desire  of  one  individual  life  for  union  with  another  individual 
life  has  been  transferred  to  one  more  human  being,  who,  at 
some  future  day,  may,  in  his  turn,  transfer  it  to  another, 
and,  through  his  offspring,  perhaps,  may  continue  to  trans- 
fer it  to  many  millions  of  descendants. 

The  desire,  therefore,  of  which  a  man  may  be  said  to  be 
a  living  embodiment  apparently  springs  from  two  different 
sources — from  the  body  and  from  the  mind ;  and  that  which 
issues  from  each  of  these  sources  tends  toward  a  different 
result.  The  desire  of  the  body  which,  as  will  be  shown  on 
page  20,  involves  or  develops  what  might  be  termed  the 


4  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

physical,  the  animal,  the  egoistic  or  the  material  tends  to- 
ward that  which  accompanies  a  consciousness  of  separation 
between  individuals ;  and  the  desire  of  the  mind,  which  word 
will  be  used  in  this  book  in  the  sense  indicated  by  the 
Greek  word  vouq,  and,  as  will  be  shown  on  page 20,  involves 
or  develops  what  might  be  termed  the  rational,  the  humane, 
the  altruistic,  and  the  spiritual,  tends  toward  that  which  ac- 
companies a  consciousness  of  union  between  them.  Because 
the  use  of  the  word  mind  necessitates,  now  and  then  the 
use  also  of  the  adjective  mental,  and  because  the  applica- 
tion of  this  adjective  is  sometimes,  as  stated  in  The  Standard 
Dictionary,  "popularly  but  improperly  limited  to  the  in- 
tellect" as  distinguished  from  the  emotions  and  will,  it  may 
be  important  here  in  order  to  avoid  misunderstanding,  to 
direct  attention  to  the  fact  that  hereafter  in  this  volume 
the  words  mind  and  mental  will  be  used  exactly  as  author- 
ized by  that  publication.  The  word  mind  will  indicate 
"the  entire  psychical  being, — that  which  thinks,  feels,  and 
wills";  and  the  word  mental  will  indicate  anything  "per- 
taining to  mind,  including  intellect,  feeling,  and  will,  or  the 
entire  rational  nature."  The  differences  just  explained 
between  the  desires  of  the  body  and  those  of  the  mind  will 
enable  us  to  understand  why  it  is  that  those  whose  thoughts 
dwell  upon  suggestions  from  the  body  which  itself  is  physical 
and  material,  are  always  estimating  the  value  of  what  they 
term  progress  by  some  physical  increase  in  the  constituents 
of  property,  personal,  communal,  or  national ;  whereas  those 
influenced  mainly  by  suggestions  from  the  mind  which 
itself  is  incorporeal,  psychical,  and  spiritual,  manifest  fre- 
quently what  is  considered  an  inexcusable  disregard  of  any 
element  of  progress  of  the  kind  termed  physical.  To  the 
latter  class  the  highest  conception  of  human  advancement 
seems  to  be  that  which  shall  bring  mind  and  spirit  into  unity 
with  one  person,  as  in  love  or  friendship ;  or  with  many,  as  in 
association  and  fellowship ;  or  with  all  men  as  in  altruistic 
efforts;  or  with  God  as  in  religion. 

Before  proceeding  further  in  the  direct  line  of  our  thought, 
it  seems  best  to  turn  aside  for  a  moment,  and  explain  why 
this  treatise  has  been  begun  by  directing  attention  to  human 
desires.  This  is  not  because  these  are  supposed  to  furnish 
to  consciousness  the  earliest  testimony  to  the  fact  of  one's 
existence.  Before  experiencing  a  desire,  one,  of  course, 
must  have  been  made  aware  by  perception  of  a  difference 


LOWER  AND  HIGHER  DESIRES  5 

between  himself  and  something  else;  by  sensation,  or  physi- 
cal feeling,  of  a  difference  between  pleasure  and  pain ;  and  by 
instinct  of  a  method  in  accordance  with  which  the  mind  can 
increase  the  pleasure  and  avoid  the  pain,  through  appre- 
hending the  drift  before  comprehending  the  details  of  think- 
ing. But  these  are  elements  of  experience  that  are  discover- 
able only  by  analysis .  In  that  which  first  brings  them  before 
consciousness,  they  are  combined  together,  and,  not  only  so, 
but  are  often  developed  into  the  later  and  more  intelli- 
gible forms  which  they  assume  after  they  have  passed  into 
the  region  of  clear  thought,  emotional  sentiment,  and  per- 
sonal inclination.  Before  reaching  this  region,  too,  the  ele- 
mentary experiences  that  have  been  mentioned  have  an 
important  bearing  upon  action  in  general.  Especially  is  this 
true  with  reference  to  instinct.  Indeed,  one  could  say 
that  it  is  never  wise  for  a  man  to  ignore  the  guidance  of 
instinct,  except  in  cases  in  which  it  is  clearly  the  result  of 
promptings  of  the  body  as  contrasted  with  the  mind.  Per- 
ception, sensation,  and  instinct,  however,  have  nothing  to 
do  with  moral  action  until  their  influence  is  revealed  in 
connection  with  the  desires.  This  fact  justifies  beginning 
this  treatise  with  a  consideration  of  these  latter. 

A  few  words  further  may  be  in  place  in  order  to  show  why 
the  influences  of  body  or  of  mind  that  we  have  been  consid- 
ering can  be  properly  designated  by  the  term  desire;  as 
well  as  to  explain  the  meaning  intended  to  be  attached  to 
this  term  when  it  is  employed  hereafter.  By  desire  is 
meant  a  tendency  to  activity  that  is  inherent  in  the  man  in 
the  sense  of  being  started  from  within  him.  The  tendency 
may  be  drawn  toward  particular  forms  of  activity  by  ex- 
ternal objects  or  circumstances;  but  these  do  not  create  it. 
They  would  have  no  influence  upon  it,  were  it  not  already 
in  existence.  No  babe  would  accept  nourishment  unless 
previously  feeling  an  impulse  to  take  it.  It  needs  to  be 
said,  too,  that  this  word  desire  has  not  been  selected  in 
ignorance  of  the  distinction  sometimes  drawn  between  it 
and  what  many  philosophers  term  an  impulse  of  bodily 
appetite,  and  sometimes  also  drawn  between  it  and  the 
results  of  yearning  or  aspiration  associated  with  the  exer- 
cise of  the  mind.  But  ordinary  language  sufficiently  differ- 
entiates between  these  extremes  by  terming  the  former 
lower  desire,  and  the  latter  higher  desire.  We  could  not 
say,  except  when  speaking  metaphorically,  that  a  man  had 


6  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

an  appetite  for  fellowship,  or  a  yearning  or  an  aspiration  for 
food.  Yet,  in  both  cases,  it  would  be  appropriate  to  use 
the  word  desire.  In  a  place  where,  as  in  the  present  discus- 
sion, a  generic  term  is  needed,  it  seems  allowable  to  use  this 
one  which,  without  any  change  in  its  accepted  meanings, 
may  be  made  to  serve  the  purpose. 

It  is  important  to  recognize,  also,  that  lower  desire  in  a 
man  does  not  mean  exactly  the  same  as  appetite,  nor  higher 
desire  exactly  the  same  as  yearning  or  aspiration.  It  is 
conceivable  that  an  animal  should  have  appetite  without 
aspiration,  or  that  an  angel  should  have  aspiration  with- 
out appetite.  But  such  a  condition  is  not  conceivable  in 
a  man.  His  material  or  bodily  nature  is  so  connected,  in 
every  part  of  it,  with  his  mental  nature  that  whatever  is 
experienced  by  the  one  is  almost  necessarily  experienced 
by  the  other.  He  cannot  be  conscious  of  an  animal  feeling 
without  being  conscious  also  of  a  human  thought ;  and  it  is 
the  two  together  that  make  a  man's  desire — his  very  lowest 
desire — different  in  the  reach  of  its  possibilities  from  animal 
impulse.  When  we  say  that  a  man  indulging  to  excess  in 
lust  or  passion  is  a  brute,  we  are  not  condemning  the  brute, 
nor  the  animal  nature  that  a  man  shares  with  the  brute. 
We  are  condemning  the  mental  nature  which  we  all  feel 
that,  in  a  man,  should  act  in  conjunction  with  the  animal 
nature. 

This  fact  with  reference  to  the  double  relationship  of  de- 
sires, both  to  body  and  to  mind — a  relationship  suggested 
by  what  was  said  on  page  2  has  a  noteworthy  bearing  {see 
page  1 9)  on  the  whole  subject  before  us.  Everybody  speaks 
of  desires  that  are  bodily  or  physical,  and  of  those  that  are 
mental  or  rational,  and  the  same  phraseology  will  be  adopted 
in  the  discussions  of  this  book.  But  let  it  be  understood 
here,  once  for  all,  that  these  terms  are  not  meant  to  indicate 
a  quality  that  is  exclusive.  The  very  adjectives  used  might 
of  themselves  indicate  this.  A  musical  comedy  is  not  all 
music,  nor  a  comical  situation  all  comedy.  It  is  justifiable 
to  apply  the  same  principle  to  the  words  bodily  and  mental. 
In  the  human  constitution,  body  and  mind  are  so  closely 
connected  that  one  cannot  invariably  separate  that  which 
has  its  source  in  the  one  from  that  which  has  its  source  in  the 
other.  Even  if  he  could,  the  difference  between  the  influ- 
ences of  the  two  seems  to  be  determined  not  so  much  by 
their  constituent  elements  as  by  the  proportionments  and 


THOUGHT  AND  FEELING  IN  DESIRE  7 

adjustments  of  these  elements — by  the  primality  or  domin- 
ance of  the  one  or  the  other  of  them.  Human  desire  involves 
thought — and,  therefore,  the  exercising  of  conscious  mental- 
ity. But  in  bodily  desire,  for  reasons  to  be  given  on  page  20, 
the  source  and  end  of  gratification  are  in  the  bodily  nature; 
and  in  mental  desire,  they  are  in  the  mental  nature.  In 
other  words,  one  might  say  that,  in  bodily  desire,  the  thought 
of  which  one  is  conscious  is  subordinated  to  physical  feeling 
which  it  attends  and  serves,  whereas,  in  mental  desire, 
this  feeling  is  subordinated  to  psychical  thought  which  it 
attends  and  serves.  A  man's  bodily  desire  is  never  exer- 
cised without  some  intellection ;  nor  his  mental  desire  with- 
out some  sensation.  The  reader  needs  to  bear  these  facts  in 
mind.  Otherwise  he  may  make  the  mistake  of  supposing 
that,  hereafter,  in  this  book,  desires  of  the  body  as  contrasted 
with  those  of  the  mind  may  indicate  merely  the  difference 
between  the  sentient  and  the  intellectual.  The  distinction 
between  the  two  cannot  be  indicated  thus.  It  is  more 
nearly  allied  to  that  which  is  meant  when,  in  referring 
either  to  real  things  or  to  ideal  thoughts  and  the  emotions 
accompanying  them,  we  contrast  the  material  with  the 
spiritual,  the  distinction  between  which  will  be  found 
indicated  on  pages  38  and  39. 

Are  we  then  to  look  upon  desire  as  something  that  always 
includes  thought?  Not  so,  perhaps,  if  the  subject  be  con- 
sidered merely  philosophically.  For  purposes  of  analysis, 
we  can  separate  thought  in  desire  from  the  feeling  in  it.  But, 
practically,  they  seem  inseparable ,  because  it  is  the  thought 
in  consciousness — i.  e.y  the  effect  of  the  desire  upon  the 
thought — that  reveals  to  the  mind  the  fact  that  the  desire  is 
present.  As  Sir  William  Hamilton  (1 788-1 844)  says  in  his 
eleventh  Lecture  on  Metaphysics,  "Let  the  mental  phe- 
nomena be  distributed  under  the  three  heads  of  phenomena 
of  cognition,  or  the  faculties  of  knowledge ;  phenomena  of 
feeling,  or  the  capacities  of  pleasure  and  pain;  and  phe- 
nomena of  desiring  and  willing,  or  the  powers  of  conation. 
The  order  of  these  is  determined  by  their  relative  consecu- 
tion. Feeling  and  appetency  suppose  knowledge.  The 
cognitive  faculties,  therefore,  stand  first.  But  as  will  and 
desire  and  aversion,  suppose  a  knowledge  of  the  pleasurable 
and  painful,  the  feelings  will  stand  second,  as  intermediate 
between  the  two. "  It  will  be  noticed  that  this  statement 
accords  perfectly  with  the  conception  of  desire  expressed  in 


8  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

the  preceding  paragraph — i.  e.,  of  desire  as  being  a  result  of 
the  exercise  of  thought  and  feeling  in  combination.  To 
accommodate  the  statements  made  on  page  6  of  this  vol- 
ume, to  those  of  Hamilton,  it  would  be  necessary  merely  to 
supplement  them  by  saying  that  when,  in  a  desire,  the 
thought  is  more  influential  than  the  feeling,  the  desire  as  a 
whole  gives  expression  to  the  mind  and  when  the  feeling  is 
the  more  influential,  the  desire  as  a  whole  gives  expression 
to  the  body. 

It  is  important  to  notice,  too,  that  the  feeling,  or,  if  not 
traceable  to  the  body  but  to  the  mind,  the  emotion  in- 
volved in  desire  is  not  merely  passive  in  character,  but  ac- 
tive. In  a  passive  way,  a  man  may  feel  that  fresh  spring 
water  is  cooling  to  his  tongue,  or  may  have  an  emotion 
awakened  by  hearing  a  church  bell,  and  yet  experience  no 
desire  either  to  receive  or  to  reject  the  one,  or  to  hear  or  not 
to  hear  the  other.  Human  desire  is  a  thoughtful  feeling  that 
is  connected  with  a  consciousness  of  being  impelled  to  action. 
The  Germans  trace  this  impelling  to  bestrebungs  Vermogen 
(strife-power) ;  the  French  to  elan  vital  (vital  push) ;  and 
it  seems  to  be  the  same  as  that  recognized  in  the  modern 
theory  of  some  of  our  scientists  and  philosophers  which  is 
termed  energism  {see  page  57).  This  theory  was  devised  in 
order  to  account  for  the  working  out  of  the  results  of  evolu- 
tion; and  it  may  be  defined  as  a  tendency  causing  every- 
thing that  has  life  to  push  outward  and  onward  in  lines  that 
develop  its  own  possibilities.  It  seems  to  be  because  of  the 
recognition  of  this  activity  in  connection  with  desire  that 
the  latter  is  so  frequently  considered,  as  by  Sir  William 
Hamilton  in  the  passage  just  quoted,  a  function  of  the  will. 
It  is  apparently  considered  so  even  by  those  who  do  not  al- 
ways include  thought  as  a  preceding  condition  or  a  constitu- 
ent of  desire.  For  instance,  Professor  Wilhelm  M.  Wundt 
(1832-  ),  of  Leipsic  University,  in  Chapter  I.,  Section  1  of 
his  Principles  of  Morality,  as  translated  by  M.  F.  Washburn, 
says  that  "Every  act  of  will  presupposes  a  feeling  with  a 
definite  and  peculiar  tone;  it  is  so  closely  bound  up  with  this 
feeling  that,  apart  from  it,  the  act  of  will  has  no  reality  at 
all, "  and  again  in  Section  3,  "feelings  and  impulses  are  not 
processes  different  in  kind  from  will,  but  elements  of  volun- 
tary activity  itself  and  separable  from  it  only  by  abstrac- 
tion." And  then  he  goes  on  to  say  that ' '  we  should  always 
yield  to  the  first  feeling  or  impulse  actuating  us,  were  it  not 


INDIVIDUAL  RESPONSIBILITY  9 

counteracted  by  another  which  overcomes  the  first  because 
it  is  stronger." 

A  statement  like  this,  unless  its  terms  be  very  clearly 
defined,  ic  apt  to  be  misleading.  This  particular  statement 
seems,  at  first  thought,  to  be  at  variance  with  the  testi- 
mony of  consciousness.  Every  man  is  aware  within  himself 
of  instances  it  which  a  logical  presentation  of  thought  by 
another,  or  merely  a  recalling  by  oneself  of  facts  or  argu- 
ments appealing  to  rationality  or  imagination,  has  counter- 
acted the  influence  of  feeling,  no  matter  how  strong  it  may 
have  been.  If  instead  of  using  the  term  feeling,  one  use  the 
term  desire,  saying  that  the  will  acts  in  accordance  with 
the  stronger  desire,  he  is  nearer  the  truth,  because,  as  has 
been  shown,  the  conception  of  desire  includes  a  conception 
of  the  influence  of  thought  as  well  as  of  feeling.  Every 
man  sometimes  finds  himself  of  his  own  will,  perform- 
ing a  very  repulsive  duty  that  does  not  fulfill,  nor  prom- 
ise to  fulfill,  any  influence  of  which  he  is  conscious, 
except  a  mental  conclusion,  resulting  from  sheer  reason- 
ing. This  is  a  fact  which  it  does  not  seem  philosophical 
to  disregard. 

Moreover,  when  one  turns  to  the  will  itself,  there  are 
additional  reasons  for  this  view.  In  former  times — and 
notwithstanding  certain  present  tendencies  to  ignore  this 
classification  it  seems  wise  to  continue  to  emphasize  it — the 
main  functions  ordinarily  ascribed  to  will  were  choice  and 
volition.  The  first  has  to  do  with  the  selecting  from  among 
others  of  some  general  end  to  be  sought.  The  second  has 
to  do  with  the  selecting  from  among  others  of  different  par- 
ticular means  to  be  used  for  the  attainment  of  this  end. 
Both  these  functions  are  as  nearly  connected  with  reasoning 
and  judging  as  they  are  with  feeling  and  emotion.  If  so, 
there  is  no  warrant  for  holding  that  the  latter  are  connected 
with  choice  or  volition  in  any  sense  that  is  not  true  of  the 
former. 

This  conception  of  the  inevitableness  of  the  influence  of 
feeling  or  emotion  upon  the  action  of  the  will  is  at  variance 
not  only  with  the  testimony  of  consciousness,  but  of  that 
which  men  term  conscience.  If  the  action  of  the  will  be 
wholly  determined  by  feelings,  and  these  be  determined,  as 
many  hold,  by  a  man's  nature  or  environment,  then  nature 
or  environment  and  not  the  man  himself  is  responsible  for 
the  right  or  wrong  of  his  actions.     No  man  feels  that  this 


10  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

is  wholly  true.  However  strong  a  temptation  may  seem, 
most  men  have  a  conception  that,  if  they  could  not  resist 
its  coming,  they  could  have  avoided  it  by  flying  away 
when  they  received  the  first  intimation  of  its  approach. 
They  cannot  rid  themselves  of  a  feeling  that  it  is  to  their 
own  discredit  when  they  do  wrong;  and  to  their  own  credit 
when  they  do  right.  Of  course,  some  of  the  conditions  of 
life  are  determined  for  us — the  body,  brain,  and  tempera- 
ment that  we  inherit,  the  family,  race,  society,  nation, 
religion,  or  age  into  which  we  have  been  born  with  the 
associations,  customs,  and  laws  by  which  we  find  ourselves 
surrounded.  These  are  conditions  which  necessarily  suggest 
to  all  thinking  people  an  overpowering  influence  of  fate  or 
destiny,  and  to  religious  people  an  overruling  Providence, 
— what  they  term  a  result  of  divine  decree.  *  Nevertheless 
every  man  "feels  that,  although  his  life  is  limited  by  condi- 
tions like  these,  and  many  others  too  subtle  to  describe  or 
even  detect,  his  own  will,  acting  inside  of  these  limitations, 
has  a  degree  of  freedom  which  makes  him  responsible  for 
certain  things  that  he  does.  He  is  like  a  boy  shut  up  by  his 
parents  in  a  house  on  a  rainy  day.  He  is  not  responsible  for 
what  goes  on  outside  the  house — in  the  garden  or  stable. 
But  he  is  responsible  for  what  goes  on  inside  the  house. 

1  In  connection  with  this  thought  it  is  difficult  to  avoid  mentioning 
one  extremely  anomalous  fact.  It  is  this, — that  every  suggestion  that 
human  life  is  entirely  subject  to  fate  or  destiny,  as  in  theories  not  only  of 
phrenology,  palmistry,  and  astrology  but  in  the  theologies  of  almost  all 
religions, — that  every  such  suggestion  is  derived  from  an  observation  of 
conditions  and  laws  of  the  external  world  which,  in  themselves,  are 
material  and  physical  in  their  nature;  and  that,  on  the  contrary  every 
suggestion  that,  within  certain  limits,  a  human  will  can  act  freely  and 
thus  to  an  extent  control  one's  own  destiny,  is  derived  from  a  conscious- 
ness of  conditions  and  laws  of  the  internal  mind  that  are  spiritual  and 
psychical  in  their  nature.  Yet  the  majority  of  religious  writers  have 
attributed  the  former  influence,  which  is  distinctly  material  and  physical, 
to  God,  terming  it  the  result  of  Divine  Sovereignty,  and,  at  the  same 
time,  attributed  the  latter  influence,  which  is  distinctively  spiritual  and 
psychical  to  man,  terming  it  the  result  of  human  agency.  Is  it  strange 
that  those  taught  these  two  conceptions  should  so  often  substitute  a 
deceptive  and  hypocritical  observance  of  external  courtesies,  customs, 
and  conventions  for  morality,  and  of  external  professions,  rites,  and  cere- 
monies for  religion?  No  wonder  that  the  prophet  of  Nazareth  and  his 
followers  should  have  felt  constrained  to  declare  God  to  be  "a  spirit" 
(John  4 :  24)  exercising  the  functions  of  his  kingdom  not  outside  the  mind 
but  "within"  it  (Luke  17:  21)  through  an  influence  "strengthened  with 
might  by  his  spirit  in  the  inner  man  "  (Ephesians  3  :  16) ! 


DESIRE  AT  THE  BASIS  OF  HUMAN  ACTION  II 

There  he  must  be  quiet,  gentlemanly,  and  decent.  So  with- 
in the  limits  assigned  him,  every  man  feels  a  degree  of 
responsibility.  This  feeling  must  have  a  cause,  though  it 
may  not  be  possible  for  us  to  determine  exactly  what  this  is. 
It  may  be  a  second  desire  exerting  a  direct  counteracting 
influence  upon  the  first  desire;  or  it  may  be  a  thought  exert- 
ing an  indirect  influence  through  a  second  desire  that  it 
occasions.  Either  of  these  conditions,  too,  may  result  from 
a  man's  own  action  or  from  the  action  of  other  people. 
These  people  may  be  present  with  him  and  speaking  to 
him;  or  they  may  be  distant  from  him  and  merely  conveying 
impressions  to  him,  as  is  held  by  those  who  believe  in  tele- 
pathy or  in  other  psychical  influences  exerted  by  the  living, 
the  dead,  or  the  Deity.  Philosophically  considered,  all  these 
theories  are  admissible  in  a  sense  not  true  of  theories  that 
practically  ignore  or  deny  the  testimony  of  consciousness 
with  reference  to  responsibility.  The  only  conception 
absolutely  consistent  with  every  condition  seems  to  be  one 
recognizing,  back  of  all  the  material  or  mental  mechanism  of 
human  life,  an  impelling  agency  connected  with  personal 
desire,  and  which,  within  certain  limits,  is  able  in  some  way 
to  exert  a  controlling  and  directing  influence  upon  every 
personal  action. 

Now  we  come  upon  the  most  important  of  the  reasons  for 
beginning  the  discussions  of  this  volume  with  a  considera- 
tion of  human  desires  as  these  have  just  been  defined.  Be- 
fore mentioning  this,  however,  the  reader  perhaps  should  be 
reminded  that,  though  thinking,  feeling,  and  desiring  may 
follow  one  another  logically  in  the  order  of  sequence  in- 
dicated in  the  quotation  from  Hamilton  on  page  7,  they 
may  not  manifest  themselves  in  this  order  to  one's  con- 
sciousness. In  other  words,  while  it  is  philosophical  to 
suppose  that  no  human  being  could  experience  human  de- 
sire unless  he  were  first  capable  of  thinking  and  feeling;  it  is 
nevertheless  equally  philosophical  to  suppose  that  he  may 
not  become  conscious  of  these  latter  until  he  has  been  made 
aware  of  them  through  the  desire  experienced  as  a  result  of 
their  combined  action.  Indeed  without  experience  of  this  de- 
sire, which  it  will  be  recalled  that  Hamilton  makes  a  function 
of  the  will,  a  man,  perhaps,  would  have  no  consciousness 
at  all  so  far  as  consciousness  involves  a  sense  of  per- 
sonality; i.  e.,  a  sense  of  a  personal  will  capable  of  being  used 
for  a  personal  purpose.     A  babe,  for  instance,  would  never 


12  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

think  about  drinking  or  reach  out  his  hand  for  a  cup  if  he 
had  not  begun  by  feeling  the  impulse  awakened  by  thirst. 
So  with  innumerable  thoughts  and  actions  connected  with 
other  subjects.  Some  rudiment  of  desire  gives  rise  to  them. 
Later  in  life,  when  the  desire  and  the  thought  or  feeling  oc- 
casioned by  the  object  desired  have  been  many  times  as- 
sociated, the  consciousness  of  the  one  does  not  necessarily 
precede  that  of  the  other.  A  man  who  is  asked  to  drink  by 
no  means  always  desires  to  quench  thirst  before  he  accepts , 
nor  does  he  always,  before  desiring  to  fight  another,  wait 
until  after  he  has  had  time  to  hear  an  insult,  and  to  think 
about  it.  The  most  that  can  be  affirmed  is  that  the  thought, 
emotion,  and  desire  are  apt  to  manifest  themselves  in  con- 
nection. But  an  analysis  of  the  conditions  in  childhood,  as 
well  as  in  mature  life,  seems  to  render  it  philosophical  to 
ascribe  to  desires  a  primary  influence  in  making  all  the  action 
of  the  mind  expressive  of  the  personal  character  of  the  one 
who  experiences  them. 

If  this  be  so,  it  will  be  recognized  at  once  that  ethics,  which 
has  to  do  with  the  methods  of  making  thought,  feeling,  and 
practice  expressive  of  the  right  kind  of  character,  must  be- 
gin with  a  consideration  of  the  methods  of  influencing  the 
desires.  It  is  only  when  agencies  of  appeal  come  into  con- 
tact with  these  that  the  effect  produced  upon  opinion, 
inclination,  and  conduct  can  be  expected  to  be  thoroughly 
satisfactory,  in  the  sense  of  being  in  accord  with  that  which 
is  most  fundamentally  right  in  principle  and  application. 

This  conclusion,  developed  from  an  examination  of  the 
facts  of  consciousness  through  what  may  be  termed  a  meta- 
physical method,  will  be  found  to  be  confirmed  when  we  turn 
to  consider  the  light  thrown  upon  the  same  subject  by  the 
facts  revealed  through  the  methods  adopted  when  studying 
the  physical  sciences.  Very  lately,  Dr.  George  Howard 
Parker  (1864-  ),  Professor  of  Zoology  at  Harvard,  in  a 
paper  published  in  Volume  XLVI.  of  the  New  Series  of 
Science  has  asserted  "that  we  have  reason  to  believe  that 
muscular  activity  preceded  nervous  origins, "  that  "our 
own  sensations  are  not  our  most  fundamental  and  primitive 
nervous  processes;  but  behind  these  and  of  much  more 
ancient  lineage  are  our  impulses  to  action,  our  wishes,  our 
desires,  and  the  whole  vague  body  of  nervous  states  that 
drive  us  to  do  things.  These  are  the  most  ancient  and  deep- 
ly seated  of  our  nervous  propensities,  and  immeasurably 


SYMPATHETIC  AND  CEREBROSPINAL  NERVES      13 

antedate  in  the  point  of  origin  our  sensations  with  all  that 
supergrowth  that  constitutes  the  fabric  of  our  mental 
life." 

As  most  of  us  are  aware,  the  significance  of  this  testimony 
is  connected  with  the  recognition  of  the  fact  that  all  a  man's 
psychical  experience,  so  far  as  concerns  his  consciousness  in 
this  world,  depends  upon  the  physical  life  that  is  in  his  body; 
and  that  any  particular  phase  of  this  consciousness,  such 
as  is  manifested  in  the  exercise  of  desire,  depends  upon  the 
existence  and  action  within  him  of  the  physical  organs  fitted 
to  promote  it.  In  other  words,  if  we  find  that  the  physical 
organs  needed  in  order  to  convey  a  consciousness  of  desires 
are  the  earliest  of  those  that  are  developed  in  the  body,  then 
we  have  one  reason,  at  least,  for  arguing  that  it  is  with  some 
beginnings  of  these  desires  that  a  man's  conscious  life  begins. 

Bearing  this  thought  in  mind,  let  us  now  notice  further 
that  all  anatomists  agree  in  tracing  the  activities  of  life  in  the 
human  body  to  two  systems  of  nerves — one  formerly  termed 
the  great  sympathetic  system,  but  more  recently,  through 
the  influence  of  Dr.  Langley  of  Cambridge,  the  automatic 
nervous  system;  and  the  other  termed  the  cerebro-spinal 
system.  The  former  is  chiefly  located  and  performs  its 
chief  functions  in  the  trunk  of  the  body,  and  carries  on, 
without  voluntary  action  on  the  part  of  the  man,  such  opera- 
tions as  are  essential  to  his  keeping  alive,  like  the  beating  of 
the  heart,  the  circulation  of  the  blood,  the  processes  of  di- 
gestion, and  the  movements  of  the  lungs  so  far  as  these  latter 
are  involuntary.  In  other  words,  this  sympathetic  or  auto- 
matic system  carries  on  the  functions  of  that  which  may  be 
termed  basic  in  animal  life.  In  this  life,  the  system  is  al- 
ways found.  Indeed,  traces  of  something  analogous  to  it, 
are  said  to  be  found  even  among  the  vegetables.  The  cere- 
bro-spinal system  of  nerves,  on  the  other  hand,  is  chiefly 
located  and  performs  its  chief  function  in  or  from  the  brain 
and  the  spine;  and  is  the  source  of  all  voluntary  muscular 
or  mental  action.  This  system  differs  from  the  automatic 
in  being  much  more  largely  and  fully  developed  in  man 
than  in  the  lower  animals;  and,  for  this  reason  alone,  as 
well  as  for  others  that  need  not  be  mentioned,  anatomists 
attribute  to  its  action  most  of  his  distinctively  intellectual 
qualities. 

From  these  facts,  it  is  evident  that  the  first  experiences 
of  a  child  accompany  the  action  of  the  automatic  nervous 


14  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

system,  a  system  which  he  shares  with  the  lower  animals 
and  the  effects  of  which  he  experiences  in  the  same  involun- 
tary way  as  they  do.  He  breathes,  and  digests,  not  only,  but 
he  drinks  automatically,  and,  in  connection  with  the  latter, 
develops  desire.  If  he  did  not  develop  this,  the  automatic 
system  would  soon  have  little  to  digest.  It  is  a  ques- 
tion of  course  whether  one  ever  becomes  conscious  of  the 
promptings  traceable  to  this  system  except  as  its  nerves 
come  into  contact  with  some  of  the  ramifications  of  the 
cerebro-spinal  nerves.  But  even  if  this  contact  be  neces- 
sary, the  automatic  system  must  be  regarded  as  the  primary, 
notwithstanding  its  being  only  the  indirect,  source  of  the 
influence  communicated. 

The  question  may  naturally  arise  now  whether  the  con- 
sciousness of  higher  or  mental  as  well  as  of  lower  or  bodily 
desire  may  rightly  be  associated  with  the  action  of  the  au- 
tomatic as  well  as  of  the  cerebro-spinal  nervous  system. 
Among  others  who  have  tried  to  answer  this  question  is  Dr. 
Richard  Maurice  Bucke  (1837-  ),  Superintendent  of  the 
Asylum  for  the  Insane  at  London,  Ontario,  Canada.  In 
Chapter  III.  of  a  book  entitled  The  Moral  Nature  of  Man, 
in  speaking  of  the  higher  emotions  which,  in  a  different  way 
from  that  indicated  in  this  volume,  he  associates  with  the 
moral  nature,  he  shows,  among  other  things,  that  these 
are  ordinarily  felt  to  manifest  themselves  in  the  trunk, 
and  thus  in  that  part  of  the  body  where  anatomy  finds 
the  chief  nerves  of  the  automatic  system;  that  these 
higher  emotions  are  often  accompanied  by  tears,  perspira- 
tion, dryness  of  the  throat,  and  other  phenomena  that  in- 
volve an  action  of  the  glands,  which  anatomy  has  found  to 
be  under  almost  exclusive  control  of  this  system ;  that  higher 
emotive  expression,  as  in  thrills,  chills,  laughter,  and  sobs, 
is  rhythmical,  which  is  particularly  the  case  with  action 
attributable  to  these  nerves,  as  in  the  circulation  of  the 
blood  and  in  the  movements  of  the  digestive  organs  and  the 
lungs;  and  also  that  this  system  manifests  a  larger  propor- 
tionate development  in  the  physical  frames  of  women  than 
in  the  frames  of  men,  and  that  the  same  is  the  case  with  the 
emotive  development.  Facts  like  these,  in  connection  with 
others  which  all  anatomists  acknowledge,  need  merely  to 
be  observed  and  stated  to  have  it  recognized  that  when  it  is 
said  that  desires  constitute  the  earliest  experiences  of  a 
man's  consciousness,  and  as  such  lie  at  the  basis  of  all  his 


5  YMPA  THE  TIC  A  ND  CEREBROSPINAL  NER  VES        1 5 

subsequent  developments  as  a  human  being,  there  is  no 
reason  why  the  term  desires  as  thus  used  should  not  include 
those  that  appeal  to  consciousness  as  higher  or  mental  as 
well  as  those  that  appeal  to  it  as  lower  or  bodily.* 

*No  attempt  has  been  made  in  this  book  to  analyze  the  different 
sources  and  effects  of  thinking  which  precede  that  manifested  in 
ethical  action.  Such  an  attempt  would  have  involved  a  departure  from 
the  two  chief  purposes  of  the  book,  one  of  which,  as  stated  on  page  2, 
was  to  ground  its  discussions  upon  personal  and,  in  this  sense,  actual 
knowledge ;  and  the  other,  to  meet  the  requirements  of  those  of  differ- 
ent trainings  and  beliefs  such  as  are  mentioned  on  page  XIV  of  the 
Preface.  There  are  no  objections  of  this  sort  to  the  use  of  the  term 
mind.  What  this  means  everybody,  at  least  in  a  general  way,  under- 
stands. Had  an  attempt  been  made  to  show  the  relations  to  it,  or 
influences  upon  it  of  such  features  as  are  termed  soul,  spirit,  physical, 
psychical  or  spiritual,  the  discussion  would  have  entered  upon  debat- 
able territory.  For  instance,  when  the  word  soul  is  used,  some  think 
that  nothing  is  meant  that  actually  exists;  some  think  of  an  invisible 
body  living  inside  of  one's  visible  body,  and  destined  to  be  itself  visible 
in  a  future  state  of  existence;  some  think  of  a  center  of  self  and  person- 
ality exerting  a  motor-influence,  as  it  were,  through  all  life,  whether 
bodily  or  mental,  and  whether  on  earth  or  beyond  it;  some  think  not 
so  much  of  motive,  as  of  emotive  influence;  and  some  of  a  source  of 
unity  grouping  together  all  the  qualities  which,  in  this  book,  have 
been  attributed  to  mind.  Spirit,  again,  is  a  term  that  has  been  used  as 
a  synonym  for  every  one  of  the  different  meanings  that  have  just  been 
recalled  in  connection  with  soul;  while,  to  a  large  number,  the  term 
seems  to  refer  only  to  some  greatly  attenuated  physical  substance  per- 
ceptible to  those  alone  who  have  had  exceptional,  if  not  abnormal, 
experiences.  So  with  the  other  terms  that  have  been  mentioned. 
Some  class  as  physical  everything  visible,  from  rocks  to  angels;  as 
psychical,  everything  suggesting  self- direction,  whether  in  insects  or 
seraphs;  and  as  spiritual,  everything  connected  with  the  underlying 
life  that  seems  to  control  growth  and  movement  in  the  universe.  No- 
body denies,  however,  that  every  man  who  has  a  soul  or  spirit,  or  is 
subjected  to  physical,  psychical  or  spiritual  experience,  is  made  con- 
scious of  the  fact  because  of  having  a  mind  which,  in  some  subtle  way, 
is  connected  with  each  of  these  agencies  of  influence;  and,  at  the  same 
time,  is  connected,  so  far  as  concerns  life  on  this  earth,  with  a  body 
which  is  clearly  distinguishable  from  mind.  In  order  to  fulfill  the  pur- 
poses of  this  book,  therefore,  no  factors  entering  into  that  which  results 
in  moral  action  need  to  be  discussed  other  than  those  that  can  be  con- 
sidered and,  sufficiently  for  the  end  in  view,  differentiated  under  the 
terms  body  and  mind. 


CHAPTER  II 

DESIRES  OF  BODY  AND  MIND  OFTEN  ANTAGONISTIC  AND 
NOT   NECESSARILY  DEVELOPED  FROM   ONE  ANOTHER 


Desires  of  the  Body  and  of  the  Mind — Superior  Claims,  when  the  Dif- 
fer, of  the  Latter  Desires — Testimony  of  Science  as  to  Different 
Nerve-Sources  of  Each  Form  of  Desire — The  Sources  in  Different 
Parts  of  the  Brain — Desires  of  the  Body  are  Accompanied  by  Con- 
sciousness of  One's  own  Physical  and  Personal  Individuality,  Tend- 
ing to  Self-indulgence;  Desires  of  the  Mind  by  a  Consciousness  of 
Things  External  to  One,  Tending  to  Gratification  in  the  Non- 
Selfish — Desires  of  the  Body  End  in  Physical  Sensation;  those  of 
the  Mind  in  that  which  Develops  Rationality — And,  as  Contrasted 
with  the  Brutal,  the  Humane — Summary  of  the  Differences  be- 
tween the  Causes  and  Effects  of  Desires  of  the  Body  and  of  the 
Mind — Are  both  Forms  of  Desire  Developed  from  the  Same  or  a 
Similiar  Source? — How  Desires  of  the  Body  Develop — Why  they 
Develop  in  this  Way — Fear  and  Hate  Occasioned  by  Limits  As- 
signed to  Bodily  Indulgence — How  Desires  of  the  Mind  Develop 
— Causing  Consciousness  of  Sympathy,  Confidence,  and  Con- 
sideration towards  Others,  and  High  Attainments  of  Manhood — 
Yet  Bodily  Desire  is  also  Needed  for  full  Development  of  Character 
— The  Two  Forms  of  Desire  must  be  Attributed  to  Two  Different 
Sources — Attributing  them  thus  Seems  to  Violate  Philosophical 
Unity  of  Conception — Reference  to  an  Esthetic  Principle — Analogy 
between  Esthetics  and  Ethics — The  Connection  between  a  Mental 
Cause  and  a  Material  Effect  in  Esthetics — And  in  Ethics — Human 
Intelligence  Forms  the  Connection — This  Conception  Obviates  an 
Objection  to  Evolution  as  Materialistic,  and  Accords  with  a  Law  of 
Nature — Manifest  in  Every  Department  of  Nature's  Activities. 

LET  us  notice  another  important  fact  with  reference 
to  these  different  desires  and  the  activities  to  which 
they  lead.  This  is  the  fact  that,  at  times,  they  are 
not  only  different  but  decidedly  antagonistic,  so  much  so 
as  to  be  mutually  exclusive  of  one  another.  They  cannot, 
all  of  them,  be  fulfilled  at  one  and  the  same  time.  This  is 
true  of  any  two  desires  that  are  essentially  different ;  but  it 
is  especially  true  when  one  desire  is  of  the  body  and  another 

16 


DESIRES  OFTEN  ANTAGONISTIC  17 

of  the  mind.  We  give  an  instance  indicating  such  antagon- 
ism. It  has  to  do,  too,  with  those  desires  which  have  been 
said  to  be  fundamental  to  the  very  existence  of  human  life. 
It  will  be  perceived  also  that  this  instance  illustrates  con- 
ditions which,  in  general  outlines,  have  been  repeated  in- 
numerable times  in  the  history  of  the  race.  The  author 
was  once  told  by  a  friend  that,  when  quite  young,  foolish, 
and  rash,  having  not  yet  acquired  sufficient  self-control  to 
manifest  even  common  sense  and  decency,  he  fell  desper- 
ately in  love  with  a  girl,  as  she,  apparently,  did  with  him. 
They  were  alone  together  one  day.  "Will  you  let  me  do 
anything  to  you  that  I  want  to  do? "  he  blurted  out.  "Yes, " 
she  answered;  "but  I  have  always  felt  such  a  contempt  for 
girls  that  let  a  fellow  do  that."  This  answer,  as  he  ex- 
pressed it,  cooled  him  off  immediately,  and  for  all  time,  so 
far  as  concerned  his  committing  another  similar  offence. 
Could  he  make  a  girl  for  whom  he  cared  anything  at  all  feel 
a  contempt  for  herself  ?    This,  for  him,  was  impossible. 

What  had  rendered  it  impossible?  The  majority  of 
people  would  probably  say  his  conscience.  But  conscience 
is  an  agency  that  has  a  cause  for  its  action,  and  one  object 
of  this  discussion  is  to  find  out,  if  possible,  what,  in  a  given 
case,  like  this,  is  its  cause?  Just  now,  we  are  trying  to 
ascertain  the  condition  in  consciousness — the  emotion  and 
thought  preceding,  or,  at  least,  accompanying  the  action 
that  men  attribute  to  conscience.  Why  did  the  young 
fellow  pause  to  ask  for  the  girl's  consent?  Was  it  not  be- 
cause of  an  influence  that  was  distinctively  mental, traceable, 
primarily,  to  psychical  thought;  and  not  bodily  in  the  sense 
of  being  traceable  primarily  to  physical  feeling  ?  And  why 
did  his  companion  answer  as  she  did  ?  Was  it  not  because  of 
exactly  the  same  reason  ?  He  desired  unity  of  thought  with 
his  companion;  and  she  desired  unity  of  thought  not  only 
with  him  but  with  others  of  her  companions  who,  at  the 
time,  were  suggested  to  her.  The  consciousness  in  a  case 
like  this,  of  desires,  or  of  phases  of  the  same  desire  within 
one  so  different  as  to  be  antagonistic,  is  an  experience  com- 
mon to  all  up  to  the  time  when  frequent  disregard  of  the 
condition  has  made  them  perverts.  It  is  a  consciousness 
that  causes  the  majority  of  people — not  the  minority,  as 
members  of  the  minority  are  apt  to  suppose — to  accept, 
as  a  matter  of  course,  the  ordinary  customs  and  conven- 
tionalities of  society.     They  do  not  themselves  expect  to 


18  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

act  in  all  things  exactly  as  they  please,  nor — except,  possibly, 
in  Russia — have  they  any  admiration  or  even  respect  for 
others  who  do  act  thus. 

Now  that  we  have  noticed  reasons  for  believing  that  the 
desires  for  union  which  precede  the  birth  of  offspring  in- 
clude experiences  that  are  both  of  the  body  and  of  the  mind, 
and  in  such  a  sense  as  to  be  often  antagonistic ;  and  reasons 
for  believing  also  that  the  same  is  true  with  reference  to 
similar  forms  of  desire  that  develop  later  in  the  life  of  the 
individual,  let  us,  as  when  considering  the  influence  of  de- 
sires in  general,  turn  once  more  to  the  testimony  afforded 
through  more  or  less  scientific  investigations.  Years  ago, 
Francis  Joseph  Gall  (i 758-1 828),  a  native  of  Baden  but  a 
resident  of  Paris,  was  able,  as  a  result  of  studying  the  con- 
tour of  the  head  and  skull,  to  convince  many  of  the  sub- 
stantial truth  of  what,  since  his  time,  has  been  termed 
phrenology.  One  conclusion  of  his  theory  was  that  mental 
and  moral  traits,  as  completely  as  bodily  traits,  are  trace- 
able to  nerve-action  taking  place  in  different  parts  of  the 
brain.  Of  late  years,  the  same  conclusion  has  been  reached 
by  a  more  thorough  study  of  the  effects  upon  different 
parts  of  it  of  accident  and  disease,  as  well  as  by  dissecting 
it  after  death.  In  certain  details,  the  results  of  phrenology 
and  of  anatomy  and  modern  science  differ;  but  even  this 
fact  furnishes  no  sufficient  argument  against  the  general 
conclusions  of  either.  It  is  perfectly  conceivable  that  the 
circumference  of  the  range  of  any  department  of  nerve  ac- 
tivity, which  circumference  alone  is  considered  in  making  a 
phrenological  decision,  should  manifest  itself,  in  some  cases, 
in  a  place  on  the  surface  of  the  brain  remote  from  that  in 
which  anatomy  locates  a  nerve-center.  The  important 
matter  is  that,  according  to  the  testimony  of  all  such 
branches  of  inquiry,  physical  and  mental  traits  are  trace- 
able to  different  spheres  or  sources  of  brain-activity.  For  in- 
stance, referring  to  this  subject,  Dr.  W.  H.  Howell  (i860-  ), 
of  Johns  Hopkins  University,  in  Chapter  X.  of  his  Text 
Book  of  Physiology,  quotes  at  length  certain  statements  made 
by  way  of  suggestion  in  the  "Gehirn  und  Seele"  of  the 
German,  Dr.  Paul  Flechsig.  In  discussing  the  association- 
areas  of  the  brain  which,  according  to  this  latter  writer,  are 
"the  portions  of  the  cortex  in  which  the  higher  and  more 
complex  mental  activities  are  mediated — the  true  organs  of 
thought,"    and    "the   greater   relative   development    of" 


ANATOMY  OF  THE  BRAIN  1 9 

which  "areas  is  one  of  the  factors  distinguishing  human 
brains  from  those  of  lower  animals,"  Dr.  Flechsig  speaks, 
among  others,  of  two  subdivisions — the  only  ones  relevant 
to  the  subject  which  we  are  now  considering.  "Basing  his 
views,"  says  Dr.  Howell,  "upon  the  nature  of  the  associa- 
tive tracts  connecting  those  with  the  same  centers,  he  sug- 
gests that "  one  of  the  areas  "  is  concerned  particularly  with 
the  organization  of  the  experiences  founded  upon  visual 
and  auditory  sensations,  and  shows  special  development  in 
cases  of  talents  such  as  those  of  the  musical  which  rest  upon 
these  experiences.  The"  other  "area  being  in  closer  con- 
nection with  the  bodily  sense-area  may  possibly  be  es- 
pecially concerned  with  the  organization  of  experiences  based 
upon  bodily  appetites  and  desires.  In  this  part  of  the 
brain  possibly  arises  the  conception  of  individuality,  the 
idea  of  the  self  as  distinguished  from  the  external  world,  and 
in  alterations  or  defective  development  of  this  portion  of  the 
brain  may  lie  possibly  the  physical  explanation  of  mental  and 
moral  degeneracy .  This  general  idea  is  borne  out  in  measure 
by  histological  studies  of  the  brains  of  those  who  are  mentally 
deficient  (amentia)  or  mentally  deranged  (dementia)." 

These  quotations  would,  manifestly,  be  very  insufficient 
if  meant  to  impart  anything  like  accurate  or  complete  ana- 
tomical information.  But  for  the  one  purpose  for  which 
they  have  been  introduced  here,  they  may  be  considered 
adequate.  This  purpose  is  to  direct  attention  to  the  testi- 
mony— and  it  could  be  abundantly  confirmed  from  other 
sources — that  they  furnish  concerning  the  existence  of 
certain  separations  in  the  thought-apparatus  of  the  brain 
between  nerves  that  are  vehicles  of  that  which  is  bodily, 
because  conveyers  of  activity  connected  with  the  organs  of 
touch,  taste,  and  smell,  and  other  nerves  that  are  vehicles 
of  that  which  is  mental,  since  they  convey  activity  con- 
nected with  the  organs  of  sight  and  hearing.  Whether  one 
suppose  that  the  sensations  of  which  he  is  conscious  when 
he  experiences  desire  have  their  origin  in  these  nerves  them- 
selves ;  or  that  they  have  their  origin  in  a  form  of  conscious 
life  beneath  them  and  beyond  them,  of  which  life  the  nerves 
are  merely  instrumental  agents,  the  legitimate  inference  is 
the  same  and  inevitable,  namely,  that  the  two  phases  of 
desire,  one  of  the  body  and  the  other  of  the  mind,  are  started 
into  activity  by  influences  coming  from  different  directions 
and  having  different  tendencies. 


20  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

As  related  to  both  directions  and  tendencies,  it  is  worth 
while  to  notice  that  Dr.  Flechsig,  in  the  passages  just  quoted, 
associates  with  the  experiences  based  upon  the  bodily  ap- 
petites the  origin,  in  the  brain,  of  the  "conception  of  in- 
dividuality, the  idea  of  self  as  distinguished  from  the  external 
world. "  This  remark  of  his  is  suggestive  of  broader  gener- 
alizations than  are  thus  indicated.  Notice,  first,  that, 
judged  by  the  effect  upon  consciousness,  the  desires  of  the 
body — those  that  operate  through  the  organs  of  touch,  taste, 
and  smell — are  all  exercised  for  the  sake  of  experiencing  the 
pleasure  that  they  bring  to  the  organs  of  sensation  and  to 
the  physical  body  possessing  these  organs.  Exactly  the 
opposite  is  true  of  the  desires  of  the  mind.  Science  has  dis- 
covered that  there  is  more  or  less  organic  sensation  con- 
nected with  seeing  and  hearing.  But  no  one  has  ever  been 
directly  conscious  of  this  fact.  He  is  conscious  merely  of 
something  external  to  himself  which  through  the  agency  of 
eye  or  ear,  is  brought  to  his  attention.  Notice,  too,  that 
the  desires  of  the  body  operating  through  the  organs  of 
touch,  taste,  and  smell  can  never  be  fulfilled  except  so  far  as 
a  man  brings  into  his  own  physical  form,  or  into  contact  with 
it,  the  external  object  for  which  he  craves.  To  enjoy  this 
object  at  all  in  the  way  in  which  he  desires,  he  must  eat, 
drink,  clutch,  fondle,  or  inhale  it.  In  all  cases,  where  such 
possession  is  practicable,  he  cannot  be  satisfied  except  when 
he  himself  and  he  alone  has  full  possession  of  the  object. 
No  one  can  eat  or  drink  exactly  the  same  thing  that  an- 
other is  eating  or  drinking.  This  fact  makes  these  lower 
desires  not  only  bodily  and  physical,  but  causes  them 
necessarily  to  involve  more  or  less  of  selfish  indulgence 
which,  in  case  of  excess,  may  become  brutal.  The  opposite 
is  true  of  the  desires  of  the  mind  awakened  through  the 
agency  of  an  organ  of  sight  or  hearing.  These  can  very 
often — indeed  almost  always — be  indulged  to  the  full 
without  the  slightest  necessity  for  selfish  possession  or 
appropriation.  One  man's  seeing  or  hearing  need  seldom 
prevent  others  from  seeing  or  hearing  exactly  the  same 
thing.  Many  thousands,  at  the  same  moment,  may 
enjoy  equally  the  same  mountain  scenery  and  the  same 
symphony.  Indeed  their  delight  is  enhanced  by  the 
knowledge  that  other  persons  are  sharing  it.  These  higher 
desires,  therefore,  are  not  only  mental,  but,  instead  of 
being  necessarily  individual   and  selfish,  they   are,  from 


BODILY  VS.  MENTAL  DESIRES  21 

the  very  nature  of  their  influence  and  effects,  social  and 
altruistic. 

Notice,  once  more,  that,  while  it  is  possible  for  the  effects 
conveyed  through  the  organs  of  touch,  taste,  and  smell  to  be 
discontinued  after  producing  no  more  than  a  physical  sen- 
sation, it  is  not  possible  for  the  effects  conveyed  through  the 
eyes  and  ears  to  do  this.  In  this  latter  case,  every  effect, 
no  matter  how  slight,  is  in  itself  a  process  of  thought  or 
emotion.  Every  process  of  thought  or  emotion  is  necessar- 
ily followed  by  others  suggested  by  it ;  and  all  the  processes 
together  develop  and  constitute  for  a  man  that  mental  con- 
dition which  causes  us  to  term  him  rational.  The  rational, 
therefore,  as  well  as  the  mental  and  the  non-selfish,  is  de- 
veloped through  the  agency  of  that  which  influences  the 
mind  through  the  eyes  and  ears.  It  is  by  means  of  that 
which  he  has  derived  through  these  that  a  man  acquires  the 
ability  to  formulate  his  desires  into  thinking,  or  at  least 
into  definiteness  and  accuracy  of  thinking.  No  one  could 
distinguish  between  different  thoughts  unless  he  could  ex- 
press them  in  different  words.  These  words  he  either  hears 
from  others  or  originates  for  himself.  When  he  hears  the 
words,  he  usually  receives  them  in  the  form  of  sounds. 
When  he  originates  them,  he  usually  derives  suggestions  for 
them  from  the  forms  of  sight.  For  instance,  he  takes,  at 
times,  a  sound  that  signifies  one  thing  that  can  be  seen  and 
makes  it  apply  to  another  thing  that  cannot  be  seen,  but 
which  appears  to  him  to  involve  an  effect  that  is  similar  in 
principle.  Thus  he  uses  the  words,  bright,  clear,  and  cloudy, 
not  only  to  refer  to  the  atmosphere  and  water  through  which 
bodies  may  be  trying  to  move,  but  to  mind  and  brain 
through  which  half  formulated  conceptions  may  be  trying 
to  move.  At  other  times,  he  takes  two  or  three  sounds, 
each  of  which  signifies  a  different  object  or  conception  and 
puts  them  together.  This  method  causes  the  sounds  to 
represent  or  picture  an  object  or  conception  that  is  com- 
pounded in  idea,  like  understanding  or  uprightness,  or  is  con- 
tinuous in  relation,  like  words  that  follow  one  another  in  a 
sentence.  The  ears  and  eyes  therefore,  furnish  a  man  with 
that  which  enables  him  to  construct  language ;  language  en- 
ables him  to  make  those  distinctions  which  are  essential  in 
order  to  think  clearly;  and,  wherever  there  is  clear-thinking, 
there  is  also  rationality. 

It  follows  as  a  corollary  from  this  that  these  organs  of 


22  E  THICS  AND  NAT  URAL  LA  W 

sight  and  hearing  which  minister  to  the  desires  of  the  mind 
as  distinguished  from  those  of  the  body  are  the  sources  of 
the  possibilities  of  all  the  forms  of  rational  development 
which  we  are  accustomed  to  associate  with  distinctively- 
human  advancement — of  all  the  possibilities,  for  instance, 
of  art,  philosophy,  science,  or  religion.  Every  one  of  these 
is  due  to  a  further  unfolding  of  the  principle  underlying 
language.  Art,  for  instance,  emphasizes  and  extends  in 
music  and  poetry,  the  manner  in  which  language  uses 
sounds,  and  in  painting,  sculpture,  and  architecture,  the 
manner  in  which  it  uses  sights.  Philosophy  emphasizes  and 
explains  the  methods  through  which  sounds  or  sights  act 
upon  one  another  as  they  do ;  science  emphasizes  and  investi- 
gates the  matter  which  constitutes  the  substance  of  that 
which  is  heard  or  seen;  and  religion  emphasizes  and  relates 
to  action  the  supposed  origin  and  destination  of  this.  Fin- 
ally, the  whole  result  and  tendency  of  thinking,  when  ra- 
tionally and  not  physically  influenced,  is  to  seek  and  accept 
as  reasonable  and  true  not  such  perceptions  as  are  peculiar 
to  some  individual — merely,  perhaps,  because  they  accord 
with  his  wishes  or  interests — but  those  that  seem  to  be  re- 
cognizable universally  and  necessarily,  and  thus  seem  to  be 
not  merely  relatively  true  but  absolutely  so,  at  least  as 
nearly  so  as  a  being  of  limited  intelligence  can  surmise. 
All  of  us  when  we  speak  of  reason  and  truth  mean  to  refer 
to  something  that  may  be  supposed  to  exist  independently 
of,  or  aside  from,  our  own  or  anyone  else's  personal  opinion 
or  judgment.  It  is  in  this  ability  to  formulate  thought 
through  the  use  of  the  sights  and  sounds  of  nature,  and  to 
build  them  into  language,  conceptions,  theories,  and  ideals 
that  a  human  being  differs  from  a  brute;  and  the  very  non- 
selfish  rationality  that  causes  a  man  to  recognize  that  truth 
is  something  that  is  shared  by  others  and  is  derived  from 
others  as  well  as  from  oneself  naturally  tends  to  awaken  a 
sense  of  dependence  upon  them,  confidence  in  them,  and 
sympathy  for  them  such  as  is  expressed  in  what  is  ordinar- 
ily termed  the  humane  as  contrasted  with  the  brutal. 

To  sum  up  what  has  been  said,  we  have  found  reasons  for 
tracing  the  nerves  conveying  a  consciousness  of  lower  bodily 
desires  to  a  different  nerve-center  in  the  brain  from  that 
to  which  can  be  traced  the  nerves  conveying  a  consciousness 
of  higher  mental  desires;  and  we  have  found  reasons  for 
associating  logically  the  former  desires  with  that  which  is 


DESIRES  OF  THE  MIND  AND  OF  THE  BODY  23 

bodily,  selfish,  physical,  and  brutal;  and  the  latter  desires 
with  that  which  is  mental,  non-selfish,  rational,  and  humane. 

If  this  be  so,  the  natural  inference  would  be  that  the  two 
forms  of  desire — those  of  the  body  and  those  of  the  mind — 
are  essentially  different,  and  can  be  related  in  consciousness 
only  or  mainly  by  way  of  counteraction.  But  there  are 
many  to  whom  this  conception  is  not  acceptable.  It  seems 
to  them  far  more  philosophical — indeed  the  only  view  that 
is  philosophical  at  all — to  suppose  that,  while  apparently 
different,  both  forms  of  desire  are  merely  phases  indicative 
of  different  stages  of  a  method  of  influence  which,  in  origin 
and  essence,  are  not  dissimilar.  This  conception  usually 
manifests  itself  in  the  statement  or  implication  that  all  the 
effects  usually  attributed  to  the  psychical  or  mental  are 
developments  of  that  which  first  manifests  itself  in  the 
physical  and  material.  A  tendency  of  modern  thought  in 
this  direction  will  be  considered  in  what  is  said  of  evolution- 
ism in  Chapter  VII.  But  certain  aspects  of  the  tendency  it 
seems  important  to  consider  in  this  place.  Let  us  ask  then, 
for  a  moment,  whether  it  is  philosophically  necessary  to 
connect  in  the  way  in  which  some  of  these  thinkers  have 
done  the  physical  with  the  psychical. 

In  answering  this  question,  it  is  best,  perhaps,  to  begin  by 
assuring  the  reader  that,  so  far  as  a  negative  reply  is  given, 
it  is  not  intended  to  deny  that  many  of  the  possibilities  of 
the  mental  nature  are  traceable  to  the  influence  of  lower 
bodily  desire.  Every  thinker  admits  that  such  is  the  case. 
In  a  man,  body  and  mind  are  inseparable.  Whenever  the 
body  works,  the  mind  works.  Whenever  there  is  a  physical 
desire,  there  is  also,  with  the  physical  feeling  that  occasions 
it,  a  psychical  thought  that  accompanies  the  feeling;  and 
therefore  any  sort  of  a  desire  may  be  associated  with  thought. 
But,  according  to  what  has  been  said,  the  mere  existence  of 
thought  as  a  constituent  of  a  desire,  does  not  make  the 
desire  itself  bodily  or  mental.  To  be  either  of  these  the 
bodily  or  the  mental  quality,  if  it  do  not  begin  it,  must, 
at  least,  predominate  in  it.  A  desire  and  the  thought  neces- 
sarily associated  with  it  are  of  the  body  in  case  they  are 
started,  dominated,  or  directed  toward  their  end  by  sensa- 
tions within  oneself  experienced  in  the  organs  of  appetite 
like  those  of  touch,  taste,  or  smell.  A  desire  and  the  thought 
necessarily  associated  with  it  are  of  the  mind  in  case  they 
are  started,  dominated,  or  directed  toward  their  end  by 


24  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

surroundings  outside  of  oneself  experienced,  so  far  as  con- 
sciousness is  aware,  through,  but  not  in,  the  organs  of  ap- 
prehension like  those  of  hearing  and  seeing.  With  this 
understanding  of  the  conditions  with  which  we  are  to  deal, 
let  us  try  to  ascertain  so  far  as  possible  the  phases  and  quali- 
ties of  experience,  which,  as  a  man  passes  from  childhood 
to  manhood,  each  of  these  two  classes  of  desire  that  we 
have  been  considering  is  likely  to  develop  in  him. 

As  applied  to  bodily  desire,  probably  no  one  would  deny 
that,  in  strict  accordance  with  what  has  been  said  of  the 
tendency  leading  to  a  man's  birth,  his  first  impulse  seems  to 
be  to  form,  so  far  as  possible,  a  bodily  or  physical  union 
between  himself  and  that  which  seems  outside  of  himself. 
His  first  indications  of  individual  activity  are  usually  mani- 
fested by  putting  into  his  mouth  everything  that  he  can  get 
hold  of.  He  is  satisfying  his  appetite,  and  older  people 
know  that  this  is  necessary  in  order  to  sustain  and  de- 
velop his  physical  life.  But  the  child  knows  nothing  of 
this  necessity.  All  that  he  is  conscious  of  is  a  desire  to 
appropriate  from  another  physical  form  that  which  he  can 
bring  into  union  with  his  own.  When  he  gets  older,  he 
uses  his  hands  for  the  same  purpose.  He  grabs  at  every- 
thing that  he  can  touch.  Then  later,  urged  on  by  a  similar 
motive,  he  uses  all  his  limbs  reinforced  by  every  possible 
exercise  of  voice,  eyes,  and  ears.  During  most  of  his  child- 
hood, most  of  his  sources  of  energy  seem  to  be  fulfilling 
mainly  a  desire  to  seize  upon  everything  about  him  in  order 
to  possess  and  use  it  exclusively  for  himself. 

It  is  not  strange  that  this  should  be  the  case.  Whatever 
physical  possibility  may  have  led  to  his  origin,  this  would 
never  have  taken  place  unless  it  had  been  sought  through 
bodily  means.  It  is  only  natural,  therefore,  that  the  earliest 
efforts  of  his  life  should  be  in  the  same  direction.  A  human 
being  is  not  a  brute,  but,  when  he  is  born,  he  enters  into  an 
existence  for  which  brutes  alone  seem  thoroughly  fitted. 
His  first  impulse,  more  universal  in  youth  than  in  age,  is  to 
satisfy  every  longing,  no  matter  what  may  be  its  character, 
through  physical  means.  As  contrasted  with  himself,  the 
world  appears  large.  What  can  he  do  better  than  to  grasp 
with  his  hands  for  some  of  the  large  things  about  him?  Of 
course,  even  while  doing  this,  he  necessarily  begins  to  think 
about  the  object  to  be  obtained,  and  the  methods  through 
which  thought  and  will  combined  can  obtain  it ;  and,  whether 


LOWER  DESIRES  AND  CHARACTER  2$ 

he  succeed  or  fail  in  the  effort  that  he  makes,  it  is  inevitable 
that  this  should  involve  a  great  deal  of  reflection,  intro- 
spection, ingenuity,  and  intellectual  endeavor  of  all  kinds 
in  order  to  thwart  and  overcome  hindrance  and  opposition. 
Undoubtedly  these  experiences  develop  his  thinking  powers. 
But  in  what  direction?  Never,  apparently,  in  such  a 
direction  as  to  make  his  desire  predominantly  mental.  If 
not  influenced  in  some  other  way  than  by  the  physical 
and  selfish  desires  that  first  actuate  him,  these  remain  pre- 
dominantly bodily.  It  was  physical  force  that  appeared 
first  to  hinder  and  oppose  his  desires;  and  it  is  this  that 
seems  to  train  all  his  subsequent  development.  This  may 
seem  to  be  the  case  at  first  because  some  things  are  so  far 
away  that  his  own  physical  limbs  are  not  strong  enough  to 
carry  him  to  them  or  because,  when  he  gets  to  them,  some 
one  stronger  physically  than  himself  pushes  him  away  from 
them  or  snatches  them  from  him.  But  always  what 
opposes  him  from  without  seems  to  be  some  exertion  of 
physical  force;  and,  as  he  grows  older,  he  is  apt  to  become 
more  and  more  conscious  of  this  fact.  He  wants  play- 
things; but  is  kept  from  them  by  larger  people  to  whom 
they  seem  to  belong.  He  wants  to  play;  but  surrounding 
him  are  those  who  are  older  and  who  make  him  study  or 
work.  When  thwarted  he  wants  to  fight  with  his  fists,  or 
to  denounce  with  his  tongue,  but  about  him  are  plenty  of 
others  to  defeat  him  in  the  one  case,  and  to  silence  him  in  the 
other.  In  short,  when  he  wishes  to  appropriate  what  he 
desires  from  the  objects  and  opportunities  on  every  side  of 
him,  he  finds  himself  prevented  more  than  by  anything  else 
by  bodily  force,  or,  if  not  by  actually  exerted  force,  by 
threatened  force. 

The  only  result  of  this,  and  of  this  alone,  so  far  as  it 
succeeds  in  suppressing  the  expression  as  well  as  the  ful- 
fillment of  his  desires,  is  fear;  and  so  far  as  fear  alone  exerts 
a  permanent  influence  upon  his  emotive  condition  it  excites 
him  to  hate.  The  effect  of  fear  and  hate  upon  his  char- 
acter, as  he  grows  older,  is  not  to  extinguish  his  bodily 
desire;  but  to  cause  him  to  gratify  it  by  subterfuge,  by  lying, 
cheating,  stealing,  seducing,  and,  possibly,  murdering,  in  all 
of  which  he  is  aware  that  he  is  running  the  risk  of  having 
others,  alone,  or  acting  together,  in  fulfillment  of  arrange- 
ments that  they  have  made  for  the  purpose,  detect,  outwit, 
arrest,  imprison,  or  execute  him.     The  arrangements  thus 


26  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

made  are  usually  expressed  inlaws;  and  the  feelings  of  those 
against  whose  actions  these  laws  are  directed  are  almost 
invariably  hostile.  Yet  many  suppose  that  law  is  the  only 
sufficient  remedy  either  for  crime  or  for  any  other  public 
evil,  whether  it  be  financial,  social,  industrial  or  political. 
Men  suppose  this  because  they  expect  the  state  to  compel 
obedience  to  law  through  the  use  of  force.  Too  often,  how- 
ever, they  forget  that  force  is  in  danger  of  inciting  men 
against  whom  it  is  exerted  to  hostility,  rebellion  and  re- 
volution, and,  in  such  cases  if  individual  selfishness  or  class 
interest  have  been  manifested  in  the  exercise  of  the  force, 
the  same  is  likely  to  be  manifested  in  the  methods  used  in 
resisting  it.  Even,  too,  though  this  resistance  prove  unsuc- 
cessful so  far  as  concerns  outward  results,  it  may,  never- 
theless, as  shown  in  the  cases  of  many  fanatical  agitators, 
develop  such  thoughts  and  feelings  and,  ultimately,  such 
characteristics  in  those  who  have  been  made  the  subjects 
of  force  as  to  render  it  virtually  impossible  for  them  to 
believe  that  human  beings  can  be  effectively  influenced  in 
any  way  that  is  distinctively  nonselfish,  reasonable,  humane 
or  altruistic.  In  the  opinion  of  such  agitators,  nothing  can 
be  set  right  except  through  the  application  of  force.  The 
effect  of  mere  external  restraint  is  the  same  in  our  age,  as  it 
was  when  the  Apostle  Paul  declared  that  law  alone  cannot 
make  men  righteous,  because,  so  conditioned,  "law  worketh 
wrath"  (Rom.  4: 15). 

Now  let  us  consider  the  influences  exerted  primarily 
through  desires  that  are  of  the  mind.  These,  as  has  been 
said,  are  awakened  through  the  agency  of  the  eyes  and  ears, 
not  because  of  conscious  bodily  sensations  excited  in  these 
organs  but  because  of  surrounding  sights  and  sounds  of 
which  these  organs  convey  intelligence.  Everybody  must 
have  noticed  that  the  lower  desires  in  almost  their  earliest 
manifestations,  may  be  antagonized  by  the  higher.  That 
babe  is  exceedingly  young  whose  animal  appetites  cannot 
be  counteracted  and  sometimes  entirely  overcome  by  the 
mother's  appeal  through  the  ears  by  a  lullaby  or  through  the 
eyes  by  twirling  some  glittering  object.  In  such  a  case 
certainly  that  which  appeals  through  the  ear  or  eye  cannot 
be  said  to  be  any  development  of  that  which  appeals  through 
the  stomach.  As  a  child  grows  older  other  appeals  to  his 
higher  nature  can  keep  him  from  touching,  tasting,  handling, 
and  using  what  he  should  not;  and  can  cause  him  to  work 


HIGHER  DESIRES  AND  CHARACTER  27 

and  study  rather  than  to  loaf  and  play.  Later  in  life, 
others  than  parents  can  incline  him  not  only  to  refrain  from 
interfering  with  the  rights  of  his  fellows  but,  through  self- 
denial  and  self-sacrifice  of  his  own  interests,  to  help  them  to 
attain  what  they  wish  or  need. 

A  person  thus  influenced  is  conscious  not  of  physical 
force  from  without  controlling  him  in  such  ways  as  to 
awaken  fear  and  hate;  but  of  psychical  influences  arousing 
mental  desires  within  him  through  the  presence  of  others 
in  whom  he  has  faith  and  for  whom  he  exercises  such 
thoughts  and  manifests  such  actions  as  faith  and  it  alone  is 
fitted  to  engender.  His  conception  of  human  nature  will 
cause  him  to  treat  his  fellows  with  confidence  and  consider- 
ateness,  while  endeavoring  to  enlighten,  emancipate,  help, 
advance  them,  and  lead  them  to  conduct  in  which  all  the 
tendencies  are  in  the  direction  of  truthfulness,  honesty,  and 
the  elevation  and  preservation  of  life.  A  man  must  exper- 
ience the  influence  of  these  higher  desires,  some  of  which 
are  diametrically  antagonistic  to  the  lower  ones,  before  it  is 
possible  for  him  to  develop  the  best  of  which  he  is  capable. 
This  statement  is  true  as  applied  not  only  to  life  in  the 
present  world  but  to  the  possibilities  of  life  in  a  world 
beyond  this.  There  are  truths  of  which  the  mind  is  in- 
tuitively conscious,  truths  that  are  axiomatic,  that  do  not 
need  to  be  argued.  Among  these  are  the  conceptions:  that 
bodily  things  occupy  space;  that  no  two  things  doing  this 
can,  at  one  time,  occupy  the  same  space,  and  that,  there- 
fore, they  cannot  merge  into  complete  unity,  or  be  one  in 
physique;  that  they  must  always  remain  two.  This  is  what 
is  true  of  the  bodily  or  physical.  On  the  contrary,  with  the 
mental  or  thoughtful  it  is  just  the  opposite.  It  does  not 
occupy  space,  and  cannot  be  subject  to  its  conditions. 
There  is  nothing  apparently  to  prevent  thought-life  from  an 
occasional  experience,  at  least,  of  psychical  unity.  Indeed, 
it  is  not  uncommon  for  men  to  cite  supposed  instances  of 
this, — instances  in  which  two  different  persons  have  been 
supposed  to  have  had  but  one  thought,  feeling,  or  purpose; 
or,  perhaps,  millions  of  them  to  have  been  animated  by  a 
single  spirit.  In  accordance  with  this  conception,  it  is  logical 
to  surmise  that  the  desire  for  union  to  which,  as  argued  on 
page  3,  human  life  on  earth  owes  its  origin,  is  a  foreshadow- 
ing and  promise  of  a  condition  that  is  certain  to  be  realized 
wherever  there  is  nothing  bodily  or  material  to  interfere 


28  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

with  the  fulfillment  of  desires  that  are  purely  those  of  mind 
and  spirit. 

Nevertheless  a  little  further  thought  will  convince  us  that 
the  results  even  of  these  higher  desires  and  of  them  alone 
will,  in  this  world  at  least,  no  more  satisfy  that  earliest,  and 
fundamental  human  desire  of  one  individual  life  for  union 
with  another  individual  life  than  will  the  results  of  the  lower 
desires.  Caressing  and  rocking  a  babe,  pointing  to  objects 
or  colors,  and  talking  or  singing  to  him  may  stay  his  appetite 
for  a  time,  but  it  cannot  do  so  long;  nor  even  keep  him  alive; 
and  though,  as  a  child  grows  older,  his  own  faith  and  love 
exercised  toward  others  may  lead  him  to  work  for  them, 
and  study,  and  deny  and  sacrifice  himself,  there  is  not  one 
of  us  but  would  have  serious  doubts  with  reference  to  the 
prospects  for  usefulness  in  life  of  a  son  who  should  mani- 
fest such  traits  and  such  alone.  Without  strong  appetites, 
often  indulged,  we  should  have  no  reason  to  anticipate 
health  for  himself,  or  even  existence  for  his  children.  With- 
out the  desires  associated  with  appetite  for  the  possession 
and  use  of  other  material  things  surrounding  him,  to  be 
gained  by  much  reflection,  planning,  ingenuity,  and  industry 
we  should  have  no  reason  to  anticipate  from  any  amount 
of  self-denial  and  self-sacrifice  on  his  part,  even  enough  of 
acquisition  and  influence  to  keep  him  out  of  a  poor  house 
where  to  support  him  would  be  a  burden  to  the  community, 
or  oat  of  a  peon  gang,  where,  perhaps,  the  very  conditions 
of  his  existence  would  be  a  curse  to  himself  and  everybody 
about  him.  If  the  tendencies  traceable  to  lower  desire 
alone  might  make  of  him  a  niggard,  miser,  dunce,  or  degen- 
erate, those  traceable  to  higher  desire  alone  might  make 
him  a  spendthrift,  pauper,  dupe,  and  in  all  ways  generally 
incompetent;  and  the  former  of  these  are  scarcely  further 
removed  from  the  traits  of  the  ideal  man  than  are  the 
latter. 

It  seems,  therefore,  that,  in  order  to  account  for  all  that  a 
man  should  be  or  should  become,  we  need  to  trace  his 
possibilities  of  activity  not  to  any  one  source  of  influence, 
but  to  two  different  and  often  antagonistic  sources, — one 
within  himself  affording  satisfaction  in  the  sensation  experi- 
enced in  his  bodily  organs  and  necessitating  his  exclusive 
possession  of  the  outward  object  occasioning  the  desire;  and 
the  other  outside  himself  affording  satisfaction  by  means 
of  things  apparently  apprehended  aside  from  any  conscious 


TWO  SOURCES  OF  DESIRE  29 

sensation  experienced  in  his  bodily  organs  or  any  exclusive 
possession  of  the  sight  or  sound  occasioning  the  desire. 

To  this  conception  of  the  existence  of  two  sources  of 
desire,  and  of  an  antagonism,  at  times,  between  them,  the 
only  logical  objection  is  the  seemingly  well-grounded  and 
very  generally  accepted  opinion  that  a  philosophical  solu- 
tion of  any  problem  is  successful  in  the  degree  in  which  it 
can  include  all  the  different  phenomena  associated  with  a 
subject,  group  them  under  one  method  of  classification,  and 
connect  them  with  the  operation  of  a  single  principle  of 
universal  applicability.  It  is  felt  that  such  a  solution  does 
not  characterize  a  theory  that  divides  the  activities  possible 
to  the  human  being  into  two  classes,  different  in  origin  and 
antagonistic  in  results.  It  is  more  philosophical,  we  are 
told,  to  accept  as  a  hypothesis,  even  though  it  may  not  yet 
be  a  proved  fact,  the  conception  that  all  a  man's  activities, 
however  psychical  or  mental,  are  developed  from  the  physi- 
cal and  material.  Especially  does  this  conclusion  commend 
itself  to  the  thinkers  of  our  own  day  on  account  of  its  sup- 
posed conformity  to  the  evolutionary  theory.  But  in 
Chapter  VII.  of  this  volume  it  is  shown  that  some  foremost 
advocates  of  this  theory  do  not  deem  it  necessary  to  accept 
this  conclusion.  They  acknowledge  that,  while  the  general 
method  of  development  may  apply  equally  to  the  material 
and  the  mental,  there  is  no  scientific  proof  of  such  a  connec- 
tion between  the  two  as  exists  in  nature  between  cause  and 
effect,  or  source  and  result;  that  the  most  to  be  said  is  that 
there  is  a  correspondence  or  correlation  between  the  two, — 
in  other  words,  that  their  various  phases  develop  according 
to  similar  methods,  but  on  different  yet  parallel  planes. 

Years  ago,  in  the  Introduction  to  the  Second  Edition  of 
Art  in  Theory \  the  author,  after  drawing  attention  to  the 
fact  that  science  deals  with  the  facts  and  laws  of  physical 
nature,  and  religion  with  those  of  psychical  nature,  had 
occasion  to  say: — {Art  in  Theory,  pages  xxxix,  xl)  that 
1 '  the  mind  is  never  strictly  within  the  realm  of  science  when 
arriving  at  conclusions  otherwise  than  through  methods 
dealing  with  material  relationships.  Nothing  is  scienti- 
fically true,  unless  it  can  be  shown  to  be  fulfilled  in  fact ; 
i.  e.t  in  conditions  and  results  perceptible  in  ascertainable 
phenomena.  The  moment  that  thought  transcends  the 
sphere  possible  to  knowledge,  it  gets  out  of  the  sphere  of 
science.     But,  when  it  gets  out  of  this,  what  sphere,  so  long 


30  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

as  it  continues  to  advance  rationally,  does  it  enter?  What 
sphere  but  that  of  religion?  And  think  how  large  a  part  of 
human  experience — experience  which  is  not  a  result  of  what 
can  strictly  be  termed  knowledge — is  contained  in  this 
sphere!  Where  but  in  it  can  we  find  the  impulses  of  con- 
science, the  dictates  of  duty,  the  cravings  for  sympathy,  the 
aspirations  for  excellence,  the  pursuit  of  ideals,  the  sense  of 
unworthiness,  the  desire  for  holiness,  the  feeling  of  depend- 
ence upon  a  higher  power,  and  all  these  together,  exercised 
in  that  which  causes  men  to  walk  by  faith,  and  not  by 
knowledge?  The  sphere  certainly  exists.  Granting  the 
fact,  let  us  ask  what  it  is  that  can  connect  with  this  sphere 
of  faith  the  sphere  of  knowledge?  Has  any  method  yet 
been  found  of  conducting  thought  from  the  material  to  the 
spiritual  according  to  any  process  strictly  scientific?  Most 
certainly  not.  There  comes  a  place  where  there  is  a  great 
gulf  fixed  between  the  two.  Now  notice  that  the  one  who 
leads  the  conceptions  of  men  across  this  gulf  must,  like  the 
great  Master,  never  speak  to  them  without  a  parable, — i.  e., 
a  parallel,  an  analogy,  a  correspondence,  a  comparison. 
Did  you  ever  think  of  the  fact  that,  scientifically  interpreted, 
it  is  not  true  that  God  is-  a  father,  or  Christ  an  elder  brother 
of  Christians,  or  the  latter  children  of  Abraham?  These 
are  merely  forms  taken  from  earthly  relationships,  in  order 
to  image  spiritual  relationships,  which,  except  in  imagin- 
ation, could  not  in  any  way  become  conceivable.  This 
method  of  conceiving  of  conditions,  which  may  be  great 
realities  in  the  mental,  ideal,  spiritual  realm,  through  the 
representation  of  them  in  material  form,  is  one  of  the  very 
first  conditions  of  a  religious  conception.  But  what  is  the 
method?  It  is  the  artistic  method.  Without  using  it  in 
part,  at  least,  science  stops  at  the  brink  of  the  material  with 
no  means  of  going  farther,  and  religion  begins  at  the  brink 
of  the  spiritual  with  no  means  of  finding  any  other  starting- 
point.  Art  differs  from  both  science  and  religion  in  finding 
its  aim  in  sentiment  instead  of  knowledge,  as  in  the  one,  and 
of  conduct,  as  in  the  other.  But  notice,  in  addition,  what  an 
aid  to  religion  is  the  artistic  habit  of  looking  upon  every 
form  in  this  material  world  as  full  of  analogies  and  cor- 
respondences, inspiring  conceptions  and  ideals  spiritual  in 
their  nature,  which  need  only  the  impulse  of  conscience 
to  direct  them  into  the  manifestation  of  the  spiritual  in 
conduct." 


MIND  AND  MATTER  CONNECTED  ANALOGICALLY     3 1 

This  last  sentence  will  suggest  why  the  principle  explained 
in  this  quotation  is  applicable,  but  in  a  general  rather  than 
specific  way,  to  ethics  as  well  as  to  aesthetics.  An  ethical 
effect  equally  with  an  aesthetic  is  due  to  the  combined  influ- 
ence of  the  material  and  the  mental.  The  chief  distinguish- 
able difference  is  that  in  art  the  mind  works  in  connection 
with  matter  in  order  to  produce  a  result  to  be  represented 
to  others ;  and  in  morals  the  mind  works  in  connection  with 
matter  in  order  to  produce  a  result  to  be  realized  in  oneself. 
In  fulfilling  the  method  of  aesthetics,  a  sculptor,  to  accord 
with  his  conceptions,  models  a  statue.  In  fulfilling  the 
method  of  ethics,  a  man  models  himself.  Just  as  aesthetics 
has  to  do  with  the  art  of  right  designing  and  producing, 
ethics  has  to  do  with  what  may  appropriately  be  termed 
the  art  of  right  living  and  doing,  and  just  as  aesthetics  re- 
sults in  representative  art,  ethics  might  be  said  to  result  in 
presentative  art, — at  least  in  the  sense  indicated  by  the 
Apostle  Paul  when,  in  Romans  12 : 1,  he  says  "  I  beseech  you 
that  ye  present  your  bodies  holy  and  acceptable  unto  God, 
which  is  your  reasonable  service." 

This  principle,  applicable  to  both  aesthetics  and  ethics, 
has  been  pointed  out  in  order  to  enable  the  reader  to  under- 
stand why  certain  relations  between  cause  and  effect  which 
seem  to  be  universal  when  all  the  factors  to  which  they  are 
applied  are  material,  as  in  science,  or  even,  sometimes, 
when  they  are  all  mental  as  in  religion,  do  not  exist  at  all 
when  some  of  the  factors — the  causes,  for  instance — are 
bodily  or  material,  and  some  of  the  factors — the  effects,  for 
instance — are  mental  or  thoughtful.  To  illustrate  what  is 
meant  by  saying  this,  notice  that  no  real,  or  logically  or- 
ganic relationship — but  only  an  ideal,  imagined  or  analogical 
relationship — exists  between  a  pleasant  thought  and  a 
smiling  face,  or  a  sad  mood  and  a  bent  body;  between  a 
doubtful  thought  and  a  rising  inflection,  or  any  angry  feel- 
ing and  a  husky  tone;  between  playing  a  game  and  using 
the  word  pastime,  or  between  being  honest  and  using  the 
word  upright;  between  thinking  of  protection  and  throwing 
the  palm  of  the  hand  up  or  out,  or  between  thinking  of  con- 
centrating thought,  and  pointing  with  the  finger;  and  yet 
the  relationship  between  the  two  in  each  case  is  apparently 
as  close  as  it  would  be  if  they  were  organically  connected. 
Moreover,  this  fact  hardly  needs  explanation.  In  the 
actions  of  the  least  instructed  as,  for  instance,  in  pointing 


32  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

with  the  finger,  the  right  mode  of  expression  usually  follows 
the  thought  or  feeling  that  is  experienced.  So  we  might 
multiply  indefinitely  a  man's  mental  activities  and  fit  them 
to  any  outline,  color,  tone,  or  combination  of  these  that  is 
possible  to  music,  poetry,  painting,  sculpture,  or  archi- 
tecture. The  principle  will  be  found  to  be  exemplified  in  all 
properly  conceived  and  thoroughly  executed  artistic  work, 
yet  in  hardly  a  single  case  does  the  mental  result  manifest 
the  slightest  organic  connection  with  the  bodily  agency 
apparently  occasioning  it,  or  occasioned  by  it.  There  is  no 
proof  that  the  result  is  an  effect  of  any  thing  more  than 
association,  suggestion,  or  imagination. 

The  reader  has  probably  anticipated  the  application  of 
what  has  been  said  to  the  subject  immediately  before  us. 
Just  as  there  is  no  actual  organic  connection  between  the 
bodily  or  material  and  the  mental  or  thoughtful  in  aesthe- 
tics, so,  as  we  have  a  right  to  infer,  there  is  none  in  ethics. 
If  material  things  do  not,  in  a  strict  sense,  develop  into 
mental  thoughts  in  the  one  department,  why  should  they  do 
so  in  the  other?  The  practical  results,  as  we  have  found, 
may  be  as  effective  as  if  they  did  so ;  but  we  have  no  philo- 
sophical right  to  affirm  that  they  do  so,  unless  we  can  prove 
it.  What  it  is  that  connects  the  two,  we  do  not  know.  We 
might  say  with  Gottfried  Wilhelm  Leibnitz  (i  646-1 71 6)  in 
his  New  Essays  on  the  Human  Understanding  that  between 
the  bodily  or  physical  and  the  mental  or  psychical  there  is 
a  ''pre-established  harmony," — a  creative  provision  or 
prevision,  so  to  speak,  in  accordance  with  which,  when  the 
one  acts  as  if  it  were  a  cause,  the  other  acts  as  if  it  were  a 
result.  But  this  theory  merely  presents  a  hypothesis.  It 
may  or  may  not  be  true.  It  cannot  be  accepted  as  a  fact. 
All  that  can  be  accepted  as  a  fact  is  this,  that  in  some  way 
human  intelligence  is  made  to  form  a  connecting  link 
between  influences  some  of  which  are  bodily  and  some 
mental;  in  other  words  that  the  consciousness  of  man  is 
influenced  on  opposite  sides — or,  better  perhaps,  from  be- 
low and  from  above  or  from  the  inside  and  from  the  out- 
side first  by  one  tendency  and  then  by  the  other. 

By  making  individual  conscious  intelligence  the  connect- 
ing link  between  the  two  opposing  influences,  one  is  able  to 
obviate  the  most  important  practical  objection  to  extreme 
evolutionism.  The  objection  is  that  the  ascribing  of  mental 
activities  of  any  kind  to  results  of  physical  development 


CENTRIPETAL  AND  CENTRIFUGAL  FORCE  33 

fulfilling  natural  law,  tends  to  relieve  the  individual  of 
any  feeling  of  personal  responsibility  for  his  own  actions  or 
their  results.  But,  besides  answering  this  objection,  a  theory 
that  enables  one  to  make  the  man  himself,  or — what  is  the 
same — his  own  conscious  intelligence  the  connecting  link 
between  agencies  that  arouse  opposing  desires  also  enables 
one  to  group,  in  just  as  true  a  sense  as  can  the  evolutionist, 
all  the  different  phenomena  associated  with  the  subject  under 
one  method  of  classification,  and  connect  them  with  the  opera- 
tion of  a  single  principle  of  universal  applicability.  As  a 
fact,  they  are  very  greatly  mistaken  who  suppose  it  to  be 
unphilosophical  to  hold  that  a  human  being  is  so  constituted 
as  to  be  under  the  sway  of  forces  influencing  his  conscious 
desires  from  two  antagonistic  directions, — one  from  within 
and  the  other  from  without.  This  fact — if  it  be  a  fact — 
does  not  differentiate  him  from  other  related  objects  sur- 
rounding him ;  or  cause  his  condition  to  be  out  of  accordance 
with  a  law  pervading  all  the  universe,  and  apparently 
applicable  to  everything  in  it. 

If  we  turn  to  any  department  of  science  this  statement 
will  be  found  verified.  The  astronomer,  for  instance,  re- 
cognizes in  the  movements  of  every  star  in  the  universe, 
whether  a  planet,  a  sun,  or  a  comet,  a  force  that  he  terms 
centripetal,  and  also  another  entirely  antagonistic  force  that 
he  terms  centrifugal.  The  first  tends  to  draw  everything 
inward  to  the  center  of  its  own  body  or  orbit ;  the  second  tends 
to  drive  it  outward  away  from  its  own  body  or  orbit .  Or  if  we 
turn  to  the  botanist,  we  shall  find  that  he  too  recognizes  in 
every  tree  or  shrub  a  force  that  holds  every  element  of  growth 
in  it  to  its  own  trunk  and  root  and  another  force,  antago- 
nistic to  this,  that  pushes  it  outward  toward  air  and  sun- 
shine, and  especially  in  the  case  of  parasites,  toward  other 
growing  plants  surrounding  it.  Even  in  objects  apparently 
so  minute  as  to  be  incapable  of  any  divisions  in  either  force 
or  substance,  science  has  found  that,  wherever  there  is  life, 
the  only  possible  way  of  getting  it,  or  continuing  to  possess 
it  is  through  the  pressure  of  vibrations  that  force  the  ele- 
ments composing  it  first  one  way  and  then  the  other  way. 
Such  conditions  are  acknowledged  by  scientists  to  exist. 
What  then  ? — The  conditions  are  identical  with  those  to  which 
we  have  found  human  intelligence  to  be  subjected.  There- 
fore the  conclusions  that  have  been  reached  in  these  pages 
do  not  exclude  it  from  classification  with  other  phenomena 


34  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

of  nature,  or  from  the  application  of  a  principle  causing  all 
nature  to  illustrate  unity  of  design.  The  scientist  will 
tell  us  that  centripetal  and  centrifugal  forces  are  both 
essential  in  order  to  fulfill  the  one  principle,  or  method, 
underlying  what  may  be  termed  the  life  of  the  universe. 
The  agriculturist  will  tell  us  that  inside  and  outside  agencies 
of  growth  are  both  essential  in  order  to  fulfill  the  one 
principle  or  method  of  growth  exemplified  in  the  life  of  the 
plant.  The  electrician  will  tell  us  that  vibration  is  essential 
in  order  to  fulfill  the  one  principle  or  method  that  proves 
the  existence  of  life  in  the  atom.  Now  when  a  man  detects 
in  his  own  nature  certain  desires  or  different  promptings 
of  the  same  desire  awakened  by  and  for  himself ;  and  certain 
others,  at  times  antagonistic,  awakened  by  and  for  others, 
he  has  not  removed  his  own  experience  from  the  operation  of 
a  law  apparently  pervading  all  existence;  and  if  in  this 
law  philosophy  can  find  a  basis  of  unity  notwithstanding 
apparently  antagonistic  forces,  why  should  it  not  be  able  to 
find  the  same  principle  exemplified  in  human  experience? 
Why,  in  the  circumstances  should  not  antagonistic  prompt- 
ings of  desires  at  the  basis  of  one's  nature  be  exactly  what 
we  should  have  reason  to  expect?  That  we  should  expect 
to  find  them,  and  to  find  what  is  and  should  be  the  bearing 
of  this  fact  upon  every  man's  conduct  and  character  it  will 
be  the  endeavor  of  future  chapters  of  this  book  to  unfold.* 

*  This  attributing  of  individual  development  of  any  kind  to  influences 
exerted  from  opposite  directions  seems  needed  in  order  to  make  phil- 
osophically acceptable,  because  showing  its  universal  applicability,  a 
theory  now  beginning  to  be  widely  adopted,  and  thus  stated  in  Arthur 
Mitchell's  translation  of  Chapter  II.  of  Henri  Bergson's  Creative  Evolu- 
tion: "The  cardinal  error  (the  italics  are  Bergson's)  which  from  Aristotle 
onward  has  vitiated  most  of  the  philosophies  of  nature  is  to  see  in  vegetable, 
instinctive  and  rational  life  three  successive  degrees  of  development  of  one 
and  the  same  tendency,  whereas  they  are  three  different  directions  of  an 
activity  that  has  split  up  as  it  grew.  The  difference  between  them  is  not 
a  difference  of  intensity,  nor  generally  of  degree,  but  of  kind."  Of  the 
differences  between  plant  and  animal,  he  says:  "Everywhere  we  find 
them  mingled;  it  is  the  proportion  that  differs."  _  Of  those  between 
animal  and  man,  he  says:  "From  the  fact  that  instinct  is  always  more 
or  less  intelligent,  it  has  been  concluded  that  instinct  and  intelligence 
are  things  of  the  same  kind,  that  there  is  only  a  difference  of  complexity 
or  perfection.  .  .  .  In  reality,  they  accompany  each  other  only  because 
they  are  complementary,  and  they  are  complementary  only  because 
they  are  different,  what  is  instinctive  in  instinct  being  opposite  to  what 
is  intelligent  in  intelligence."    See  also  page  99. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE  PROCESSES  OF  HUMAN  INTELLIGENCE  AS  INFLUENCED  BY 
DESIRES  OF  THE  BODY  AND  OF  THE  MIND 

Subject  of  the  Present  Chapter — Animal  and  Human  Traits — Methods 
of  Conceiving  of  the  Influence  upon  Men  of  Lower  and  of  Higher 
Desire — Tabulation  of  Processes  of  Intelligence  as  Developed  in 
Connection  with  each  Form  of  Desire — Explanations — Mental  De- 
sires are  more  Influenced  by  Thinking  than  are  Bodily  Desires — 
Possible,  but  not  Actual,  Separation  between  the  Psychical  Results 
of  Desires  of  the  Body  and  of  the  Mind — Dominance  of  the  Latter 
through  Influencing  the  Will — Desire  as  Affecting  the  Will — As 
Affecting  Lessons  Derived  from  Observation  and  Experience — 
From  Information — Higher  Desires  aside  from  Knowledge  In- 
fluential in  Restraining  from  Vice — Lessons  from  the  Reasoning 
Faculties  as  Influenced  by  Conditions  of  Desire — Recent  Public 
Applications  of  that  Principle — Imagination  as  Influenced  by  Con- 
ditions of  Desire,  as  in  Ideals — Ideals  as  Results  of  Imagination 
— The  Possession  of  Ideals  Differentiates  the  Mental,  Rational, 
Non-Selfish,  and  Humane  from  the  Bodily,  Physical,  Selfish,  and 
Brutal  Nature — The  Character  of  the  Ideal  Depends  upon  the 
Contents  of  the  Mind — Man  can  Live  in  a  World  of  Ideals — This 
the  Culminating  Effect  of  Thinking  as  Influenced  by  Higher  Desire. 
— Why  Ideals  are  Hampered  by  Material  Conditions — Why  Cer- 
tain Suggestions  from  this  Fact  may  be  Consoling  and  Inspiring. 

IN  order  to  anticipate  objections  to  our  general  argument 
that,  otherwise,  might  be  suggested  and  need  to  be 
answered,  it  seems  necessary  to  develop  more  fully 
than  has  yet  been  done  the  relationship  between  the  char- 
acter of  each  of  the  two  classes  of  desire  that  have  been  men- 
tioned,— those  of  the  body  and  of  the  mind ;  and  also  to 
examine  the  character  of  the  whole  form  of  intelligent  ac- 
tivity at  the  basis  of  which  each  of  these  respective  classes 
of  desire  may  be  supposed  to  be  especially  operative. 

We  are  all  acquainted  with  a  distinction  frequently  made, 
but  with  no  attempt  at  philosophic  accuracy,  between  a 
man — and  it  includes  a  description  of  his  thinking  as  well  as 
feeling — who  is  animal  in  nature,  and  one  who  is  human. 

35 


36  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

Whether  the  two  conditions  thus  indicated  are  essentially 
different,  or  whether,  as  argued  by  some,  the  latter  with  all 
its  results  is  merely  a  higher  development  of  the  former,  the 
two  are  at  least  dissimilar,  and  the  dissimilarity  ought  to  be 
capable  of  being  indicated  so  that  it  can  be  recognized.  A 
frequent  conception  is  that  a  purely  animal  being  has 
instinct,  which  some  physicists  ascribe  to  the  transmission 
of  acquired  habits;  and  a  human  being  has  intelligence;  but 
most  thinkers  are  not  satisfied  with  this  statement.  C.  S. 
Meyers,  for  instance,  in  Vol.  III.  of  the  British  Journal  of 
Psychology  says  that  to  distinguish  instinct  from  intelli- 
gence involves  "a  purely  artificial  abstraction."  Men, 
too,  have  more  or  less  instinct,  and  animals  have  more  or 
less  intelligence.  If  the  statement  were  that  animals  are 
predominatingly  governed  by  instinct  and  men  are,  or  may 
be,  predominatingly  governed  by  intelligence,  there  would 
be  less  objection  to  it.  The  conception  would  then  corre- 
spond to  the  distinction  made  on  pages  6  and  7.  It  was  said 
there,  that,  in  bodily  desire,  the  source  and  end  of  grati- 
fication are  in  the  bodily  nature,  and  that  in  mental  desire, 
they  are  in  the  mental  nature:  in  other  words,  that,  in  bodily 
desire,  the  thought  of  which  one  is  conscious  is  subordinated 
to  physical  feeling  which  it  attends  and  serves ;  whereas,  in 
mental  desire,  this  feeling  is  subordinated  to  psychical 
thought  which  it  attends  and  serves.  This  is  a  distinction 
that  can  be  easily  understood  and  verified.  In  training  a 
dog  or  a  horse,  one  appeals  to  certain  powers  of  perception, 
memory,  association,  attention,  and  obedience  which  pre- 
suppose some  exercise  of  thought;  but  he  does  it  through 
appealing,  first  of  all,  to  physical  feeling.  He  threatens  or 
whips  the  animal,  or  bribes  him  with  sugar  or  food.  Some- 
times the  same  is  done  in  training  children;  but  the  older — 
the  more  human  and  less  animal  they  become — the  more 
feasible  is  it  to  appeal  first  to  their  mental  nature, — to 
reason  with  them,  to  arouse  their  ambition,  to  stimulate 
their  imagination,  to  conjure  up  their  ideals.  None  of  these 
methods  of  appeal  would  have  any  effect  upon  an  animal. 
It  is  therefore  logical  to  conclude  that  the  nature  which  is 
started  into  activity  by  the  desires  peculiar  to  itself,  includes 
feeling,  thinking,  and  willing.  When  a  man  fulfills  bodily 
desires  his  feelings,  thoughts,  and  actions  are  all  character- 
ized by  a  bodily  quality ;  and  when  he  fulfills  mental  desires, 
by  a  mental  quality. 


H UMA N  AND  A NIMA L  INTELLIGENCE  37 

Perhaps  the  best  way  to  conceive  of  the  difference  between 
these  two  qualities  is  to  consider  the  organism  that  produces 
thought  as  an  instrument,  and  to  regard  desire  as  the  force 
which  operates  through  it.  We  all  know  how  results  in  the 
same  brain  differ  when  a  man  drinks  water  or  wine,  breathes 
fresh  air  or  laughing  gas.  In  an  analogous  way,  human 
consciousness  may  appear  to  involve  a  different  nature  when 
the  force  that  impells  it  comes  through  physical  appetite  and 
continues  to  have  a  physical  tendency,  and  when  this  force 
comes  through  rational  excitation  and  continues  to  have  a  ra- 
tional tendency.  As  Professor  Rudolph  Eucken(  1 846-  ) 
of  the  University  of  Jena  reminds  us  in  Chapter  I.  of  his 
Life  of  the  Spirit  as  translated  by  F.  L.  Pogson,  "Aristotle 
declared  that  the  difference  between  man  and  the  animals 
was  that  the  latter  cannot  go  beyond  individual  impressions 
and  individual  stimulations,  while  man,  in  virtue  of  his 
power  of  thought,  can  form  universals,  and  let  his  actions  be 
determined  by  them. ' '  When  this  is  done,  his  processes  of  in- 
tellection are  as  nearly  conformed  as  possible  to  what  might 
be  termed,  as  distinguished  from  methods  of  individual 
thinking,  the  methods  of  universal  thinking,  or,  as  Kant 
put  it,  the  laws  of  "pure  reason,"  being  developed  from  a 
search  for  truth  and  right  irrespective  of  any  relationship  to 
one's  private  interests,  or,  to  phrase  it  differently,  to  the  in- 
terests of  one  person  considered  as  separated  from  others, 
because  living  in  a  separated  physical  body.  In  the  same 
case,  his  action  is  as  nearly  conformed  as  possible  to  what  we 
might  term  the  laws  of  universal  activity  as  distinguished 
from  individual,  being  developed  from  a  recognition  of  the 
claims  or  conditions  of  conception  and  conduct  that  are 
absolute  and  unvariable,  and  cannot  be  waived  because  of 
opinions  or  aims  biased  by  one's  own  bodily  or  personal 
desire  for  self-indulgence  or  self -advancement. 

On  page  38,  an  attempt  has  been  made  to  tabulate  the 
two  differently  developed  tendencies  of  feeling,  thought, 
and  action  in  accordance  with  these  conceptions.  Under 
the  column  headed  Lower  Desire  are  grouped  the  psychical 
results  that  can  be  attributed  in  some  cases  to  animals,  and, 
in  all  cases,  to  men  so  far  as  one  considers  only  their  animal 
tendencies.  (See  pages  21-26.)  Under  the  column  headed 
Higher  Desire  are  grouped  the  results  that  can  be  attributed 
to  men  alone.  The  author  is  aware  that  this  tabulation  is 
incomplete  and  unsatisfactory.     But  to  make  it  anything 


38  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

else  would  require  much  more  time  and  space  than  is  at  his 
disposal.  He  hopes,  therefore,  that,  even  as  it  is,  it  may 
serve  the  suggestive  purpose  for  which  only  it  is  intended. 

A  Man's  Processes  of  Intelligence 
As  Revealed  to  Consciousness  in  Connection  with  the 

Lower  Desire  of  the  Body     or    Higher  Desire  of  the  Mind 
which,  in  its  nature,  is  which,  in  its  nature,  is 

Physical,  Selfish,  Egoistic,  Thoughtful,  Non-Selfish,  Al- 

Inconsiderate,  Brutal,  and  truistic,  Reasonable,  Humane, 

Material  and  Spiritual 

Become,  when  Affected  through  the  Senses 

Source — Feeling  Emotion 

Nature — Sensation  Sensitiveness 

Result — Appetite  Aspiration 

Through  the  Will 

Source — Impulse  Motive 

Nature — 'Conation  Choice 

Result — Action  Purpose 

Through  the  Cognitive  Faculties 

If,  in  their  Receiving  Powers, 
Source — Occurrence  Recurrence 

Nature — Perception  Observation 

Result — Impression  Suggestion 

If,  in  their  Retaining  Powers, 
Source — Memory  Remembrance 

Nature — Reminiscence  Recollection 

Result — Association  Comparison 

If,  in  their  Collecting  Powers, 
Source — Instinct  Intuition 

Nature — Repetition  Classification 

Result— Habit  Method 

<  If,  in  their  Constructing  Powers, 
Source— Differentiation  Analysis 

Nature — Arrangement  Logical  Sequence 

Result — Combination  Rational  Judgment 

If,  in  their  Formulating  Powers, 
Source — Imitation  Imagination 

Nature — Reproduction  Representation 

Result — Reality  Ideality 


THINKING  DETERMINED  BY  DESIRING  39 

It  is  not  necessary  here  to  enter  into  any  explanation,  or 
defense  of  the  terms  used  or  of  the  places  assigned  them  in 
these  lists.  Perhaps,  however,  it  ought  to  be  said  that  these 
places  do  not  represent  any  sequence  in  the  order  of  time  in 
which  a  man  necessarily  recognizes  the  different  activities 
indicated.  As  a  rule,  the  senses  may  be  said  to  appeal  to  his 
consciousness  first,  followed  by  some  slight  effect  upon  the 
will  before  involving  any  very  distinct  action  of  the  cognitive 
faculties.  But  the  whole  mind  is  a  unit;  and,  so  far  as  con- 
cerns that  which  is  recognized  by  consciousness,  the  earliest 
impression  may  be  occasionally  conveyed  by  imagination, 
or  ideality. 

The  one  important  fact  intended  to  be  brought  out  in  this 
tabulation  is  that  there  is  a  difference  at  every  analogous 
stage  of  mental  manifestation  between  activities  developed 
in  connection  with  the  desires  of  the  body  and  those  con- 
nected with  the  desires  of  the  mind.  The  reader  will 
notice  that  in  all  cases  the  main  difference  between  the  two 
is  caused  by  the  greater  influence  of  thought  in  connection 
with  the  latter.  It  is  because  of  the  thinking  that  has  been 
added  to  it  that  feeling  becomes  emotion ;  sensation  sensitive- 
ness; impulse,  motive;  conation,  choice;  action,  purpose; 
perception,  observation;  impression,  suggestion,  and  so  on. 
It  must  be  borne  in  mind,  however,  that  the  psychical 
results  indicated  in  both  columns  are  experienced  by  all 
human  beings.  The  only  difference  between  them  is  that, 
in  some  men,  dominance  is  given  to  the  results  developed 
in  association  with  lower  desires,  and  in  other  men  to  the 
results  associated  with  higher  desires.  In  case  of  conflict  be- 
tween the  two,  the  men  who  gratify  bodily  desire  are  usually 
termed  immoral.  Those  who  subordinate  this  to  mental 
desire  are  termed  moral;  and  those  who  go  further  than 
this,  and  wholly  suppress  bodily  desire,  are  by  some  termed 
spiritual.  As  generally  used,  however,  this  latter  word 
merely  indicates  a  tendency.  No  one  living  in  a  world 
where  he  needs  a  body,  can  be  completely  spiritual.  Nor, 
as  will  be  shown  hereafter,  is  it  right  that  he  should  be  so. 
The  term  is  conventionally  applied  merely  by  courtesy  to 
certain  persons  who  apparently  approach  the  condition 
indicated  by  it. 

The  two  contrasting  columns  will  show  also  that  each 
includes  mention  of  all  the  three  functions  needed  in  order 
to  render  a  mind  complete,  namely,  feeling,  willing,  and 


40  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

thinking.  Therefore,  though  the  bodily  trend  of  intelli- 
gence and  its  mental  trend  are  never  separated  in  a  man,  it 
is  conceivable  that  they  might  be  separated.  But  the 
only  thing  that  actually  happens  is  that,  as  a  rule,  one  of  the 
two  trends  is  more  or  less  subordinated  to  the  other.  If 
the  mental  be  subordinated  to  the  bodily,  the  reader  will 
recognize,  even  from  what  has  been  said  already,  and  still 
more  from  what  will  be  said  hereafter,  that  there  may  be, 
philosophically  considered,  a  need  for  something  like  that 
which  religious  people  occasionally  express  by  using  the 
term  conversion, — a  need,  that  is,  for  turning  the  activities 
of  the  mind  as  it  were  upside  down,  so  that,  instead  of  hav- 
ing the  bodily  desires  and  their  effects  uppermost,  the  men- 
tal shall  be  uppermost. 

Let  us  notice,  now,  how  this  conversion,  or  change  in  the 
trend  of  activities  from  bodily  to  mental,  can  be  brought 
about.  We  shall  find  that,  in  all  cases,  it  must  start  with  a 
change  in  desires.  For  instance,  to  follow  a  line  of  thought 
suggested  by  the  arrangements  of  the  tabulation  on  page  38, 
it  is  natural,  because  morality  is  ordinarily  manifested  in 
action  due  to  an  exercise  of  will,  to  think  and  say  that  a 
man  who  is  easily  tempted  to  the  wrong  has  a  weak  will; 
and  the  implication  is  that  he  needs,  more  than  anything 
else,  to  have  it  strengthened.  Many  suppose,  therefore, 
that  the  most  important  ethical  and  religious  efforts  are 
those  directed  toward  influencing  people,  especially  the 
young,  to  determine,  once  for  all  time,  to  lead,  as  applied  to 
conduct  in  general  and  to  certain  courses  in  particular,  an 
upright,  or  what  for  some  means  the  same  thing,  a  religious 
life.  In  a  community  in  which  there  is  a  tendency  to 
drunkenness,  or  to  other  forms  of  wrong  doing,  the  services 
of  a  temperance-lecturer  or  a  religious  exhorter  are  fre- 
quently secured  with  the  hope  that  his  appeals  will  persuade 
those  inclined  to  the  evil  to  become  inclined  to  the  good. 
Not  one  word  can  be  justly  said  against  these  theories,  or 
the  methods  to  which  they  lead — except  where  they  are 
supposed  to  be  based  upon  a  complete  view  of  the  whole 
subject.  But  sometimes  they  are  based  upon  a  partial 
view,  and,  therefore,  are  expressions  of  what  is  only  partly 
true.  A  right  choice  of  a  course  of  life  is  of  tremendous 
importance,  and  men  may  be  persuaded  to  it  by  an  exhorter. 
But  notice  that  the  very  fact  that  he  is  trying  to  persuade, 
indicates  that  he  recognizes  that  the  will — everything  that 


CONVERSION  41 

concerns  its  motive,  choice,  or  purpose — can  be  influenced 
best  indirectly,  through  influencing,  first  of  all,  the  higher 
emotions  and  desires  that  lie  back  of  it  and  determine 
its  action.  Could  there  be  a  right  choice,  or  any  agency 
that  could  be  persuaded  to  make  this,  were  it  not  for  the 
existence  in  men  of  such  deciding  factors  to  which  the 
persuader  can  address  his  appeal  ? 

As  has  been  said,  these  higher  desires  are  a  part  of  every 
man's  inherited  nature.  We  all  must  acknowledge  too,  that 
like  other  things  in  his  nature,  they  can  be  greatly  strength- 
ened by  environment  and  education.  An  exhort er  in  a 
community  that  had  been  prepared  to  agree  with  his  pre- 
mises by  previous  instruction  and  public  sentiment  might 
have  thousands  of  converts  whereas,  in  a  different  com- 
munity, he  would  have,  perhaps,  not  one.  Those  who 
overlook  this  fact,  and,  for  any  reason,  fail  to  exert  their 
influence  so  as  to  stimulate  and  strengthen  the  higher 
desires,  are  neglecting  the  one  thing  that  is  primary,  and, 
therefore,  the  most  important  of  all.  There  are  religious 
people,  for  instance,  who  act,  and  sometimes  talk,  as  if  they 
believed  that  the  only  influence  which  they  need  to  exert 
upon  their  children  or  friends  is  to  lead  them  to  some  church 
where  a  revivalist  can  convert  them;  and  yet  whatever 
effect  the  revivalist  may  have  upon  them  will  depend  upon 
previous  effects  that  have  been  exerted  upon  their  desires. 
And  these  effects  have  usually  been  determined  by  the 
example  and  precept  of  those  with  whom  his  hearers  have 
associated  in  their  homes,  their  schools,  or  their  business. 
That  this  statement  is  true,  may  be  confirmed  by  noticing 
that,  while  of  those  who  attain  to  high  excellence  and  use- 
fulness, some  were  conscious  in  the  past  of  a  definite  change 
in  purpose  accompanied  by  a  choice  to  lead  a  right  life;  and 
some  were  conscious  of  no  such  experience,  all  were  con- 
scious of  higher  desires  sufficiently  strong  to  give  a  right 
direction  to  lower  desires.  In  cases  like  this,  it  is  the  ele- 
ment that  can  be  proved  to  be  present  universally  which  must 
be  considered  primary  and  most  important.  The  necessary 
inference  that  must  be  drawn  is  that  in  acting  in  accordance 
with  what  is  right,  a  man  is  sometimes  conscious  of  control- 
ling impulse  by  judgment,  volition  by  choice,  and  action  by 
purpose;  and,  sometimes  he  is  not  conscious  of  this.  He 
seems  to  himself  to  perform  a  large  number  of  the  actions 
which  would  generally  be  considered  right  with  no  concep- 


42  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

tion  of  the  possibility  on  his  part  of  doing  anything  else.  In 
all  cases,  however,  whether  he  be  conscious  of  the  action  of 
will  or  not,  he  is  conscious  of  the  influence  of  higher  desires. 
An  analogous  statement  can  be  made  with  reference  to  the 
influence  exerted  in  connection  with  processes  of  thinking 
such  as  are  tabulated  on  page  38  under  the  general  heading 
of  the  Cognitive  Faculties.  For  instance,  men  have  learned 
a  great  deal  with  reference  to  the  right  conduct  of  life  from 
noticing  what  the  external  world  has  presented  to  their 
perception  and  observation.  But  could  mere  perception 
or  observation  influence  to  any  great  extent  a  man  whose 
deeper  nature  had  not  also  been  affected  by  it  ?  Is  mere  ex- 
perience in  all  cases  sufficient  ?  Does  it  always  teach  men 
what  they  need  to  know  ?  Or  does  the  lesson  that  it  imparts 
depend  upon  something  in  the  man  himself  which  enables 
him  to  receive  it  in  such  a  way  that  he  can  make  use  of  it  ? 
An  attempt  to  answer  questions  like  these  will  convince  us 
that  experience,  no  matter  how  extensive,  can  afford  little 
benefit  to  those  who  are  thoroughly  uninterested  and  there- 
fore listless.  Upon  these  it  usually  has  no  more  effect  than 
the  shifting  films  of  a  moving  picture  which  one  forgets  the 
moment  he  ceases  to  be  face  to  face  with  it.  It  is  only  after 
a  man's  desires  have  been  brought  into  exercise,  after  he  has 
been  led  to  think  much  about  certain  courses  of  action  and  the 
objects  to  be  obtained  by  them,  and  to  plan  and  to  strive 
for  these  objects,  that  he  is  prepared,  after  either  suc- 
cess or  failure,  to  take  to  heart,  as  we  say,  and  thus  really 
to  learn  the  lesson  that  experience  is  fitted  to  teach.  With 
reference  to  such  lessons,  the  same  principle  applies  in  ethics 
as  in  aesthetics.  Experience  gained  by  hearing  good  music, 
seeing  good  pictures,  feeling  their  effects  and  having  their 
methods  of  composition  and  production  explained  may 
prove  of  great  advantage  to  a  musician  or  a  painter;  but 
they  cannot  prove  this  until  after  aesthetic  desires  within 
him  have  been  powerful  and  persistent  through  many 
months  or  years,  and  have  thus  given  him  practical  knowl- 
edge and  more  or  less  personal  mastery  of  his  art.  So  in 
ethics.  We  Cannot  know  or  do  all  that  we  should  with 
reference  to  any  subject,  unless  we  properly  estimate  experi- 
ence. But  we  must  be  careful  not  to  overestimate  it.  We 
must  not  assign  it  the  wrong  place.  We  must  relate  it,  as 
nature  does,  to  the  higher  desires,  and  make  it  subordinate 
to  them. 


LEA  RNING  FROM  IN  FORMA  TION  43 

The  same  is  true  of  that  which  calls  for  an  exercise  of  what 
in  the  tabulation  are  termed  the  retaining  powers, — like 
memory  and  recollection.  Very  little  knowledge,  either  of 
books  or  of  our  neighbors'  lives  ought  to  convince  us  that 
some  of  the  worst  characters  that  the  world  has  seen  have 
been  the  most  accurately  and  fully  acquainted  with  the  his- 
tory and  probable  consequences  of  wrong  doing.  It  is  a  great 
mistake  to  suppose  that  a  mere  lack  of  instruction  is  the 
chief  reason  for  a  lack  of  virtue.  No  one  could  have  made 
the  Mephistopheles  of  Goethe's  Faust  less  devilish  by  mak- 
ing him  better  informed.  Indeed,  moral  character  is  often 
influenced  for  good  when  the  conditions  for  a  successful 
appeal  to  knowledge  in  any  form  are  not  fulfilled ;  when  the 
one  so  influenced  receives  no  adequate  information  or 
explanation  for  the  course  which  he  feels  that  he  should 
pursue.  On  the  other  hand,  no  matter  how  fully  these 
conditions  of  information  may  be  fulfilled,  the  results  will 
influence  conduct  only  so  far  as,  through  their  instrumen- 
tality, they  may  be  made  to  reach  and  influence  also  the 
desires.  For  instance,  we  all  believe  that  a  boy  should  be 
told  that  he  should  not  steal,  and  should  have  the  reasons 
for  this  explained  to  his  understanding.  But  not  infre- 
quently boys  who  have  never  been  definitely  taught  this, 
will  refrain  from  stealing,  and  separate  themselves  from  the 
company  of  those  who  do  steal,  merely  because  of  a  vague 
inexpressible  desire  to  act  as  seems  worthy  of  themselves 
and  of  the  approbation  of  others.  One  might  say  that  they 
were  too  sensitive  rather  than  sensible  to  trespass  upon  the 
rights  and  possessions  of  their  fellows.  So  with  vices. 
Many  men  will  tell  us  that,  up  to  the  time  when  they  were 
twenty-one  years  of  age,  though,  perhaps,  with  ample 
opportunities  and  examples  tending  to  lead  them  to  go 
astray,  and  with  no  adequate  knowledge  of  the  dangers  and 
diseases  that  such  a  course  would  involve,  the  simple  desire 
to  keep  themselves  clean  and  worthy  rendered  certain 
forms  of  indulgence  on  their  part  as  impossible  as  taking  a 
bath  in  a  gutter.  A  young  man  starting  out  upon  an 
engineering  expedition  over  a  western  mountain  was  told 
that,  in  case  he  were  bitten  by  a  rattlesnake,  the  first  thing 
to  do  was  to  drink  enough  whiskey  to  make  himself  drunk. 
He  replied  that  he  would  rather  risk  the  consequences  of 
the  bite  than  of  the  whiskey.  This  man  may  have  needed 
additional  medical  education,  though  not  for  the  purpose  of 


44  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

implanting  a  sense  of  obligation,  but  of  supplementing  and 
developing  its  methods  of  expression  after  it  had  been 
implanted  by  higher  desire. 

Most  men,  as  they  look  back  upon  their  boyhood,  recog- 
nize that  nothing  except  the  influence  of  higher  desire  kept 
themselves  and  many  of  their  companions  from  going  astray. 
The  author  can  recall  that  once  when,  from  a  boarding  school 
that  he  attended,  a  boy  was  expelled  for  immorality,  the 
teachers  explained  the  nature  and  consequences  of  his  of- 
fense. But,  before  hearing  the  explanation  which,  appar- 
ently, contained  information  new  to  the  boys,  the  contempt 
with  which  their  higher  desires  had  greeted  suggestions 
made  to  their  lower  desires  had  already  ostracized  the  cul- 
prit so  that  he  had  had  practically  no  companions.  One  who 
has  read  fiction  of  a  certain  class  must  have  noticed  that 
the  fall  into  vice,  which  too  frequently  makes  up  the  larger 
part  of  the  story,  usually  follows  an  excursion  to  which 
venturesome  feet  have  been  allured  by  a  tempter  cloaked 
in  the  garments  of  virtue.  The  novelist  seems  to  have 
recognized  that  the  victim,  to  appear  enough  of  a  hero 
to  awaken  sympathetic  interest,  must  be  represented  as 
being  influenced  by  a  higher  as  well  as  by  a  lower  desire. 
He  must  appear  to  be  the  subject  of  a  romantic  affection,  of 
a  spirit  of  chivalry,  inspired  by  contact  with  innocence  and 
moved  to  protect  the  unfortunate.  A  similar  conception 
influences  many  when  thinking  of  their  own  acts.  Few, 
until  they  have  become,  if  not  habituated,  at  least  accus- 
tomed to  some  form  of  iniquity,  will  not  feel  more  or  less 
restrained  from  it  by  a  higher  desire ;  and  even  a  convict  in 
prison,  whose  guilt  has  been  proved  and  is  acknowledged, 
will  usually  argue  that  he  has  done  no  more  than  other 
people  would  have  done,  if  only  they  had  had  the  same 
opportunity,  or  the  same  ingenuity,  as  himself.  In  ef- 
fect, this  is  the  same  as  to  maintain  that  he  is  as  sus- 
ceptible to  the  influence  of  higher  desire  as  is  anyone  else. 

Perhaps  the  largest  number  of  those  who  fail  to  recognize 
the  primary  influence  upon  action  of  desire  attribute  right 
conduct  to  some  one  or  more  of  the  combined  developments 
of  intelligence  as  tabulated  on  page  38  under  the  headings 
of  the  collecting  and  constructing  powers.  To  such  think- 
ers, that  course  seems  right  which,  by  some  intellectual 
process,  can  be  proved  to  be  reasonable.  This  is  the  con- 
ception which  lies  at  the  basis  of  the  majority  of  such  ethical 


DESIRE  OUTWEIGHING  REASONING  45 

theories  as  the  teleological,  utilitarian,  hedonic,  and  eudai- 
monistic,  which  will  be  discussed  on  pages  72,  73,  94-97  and 
1 17-122.  Concerning  all  of  them,  it  can  be  said  that  they 
contain  a  partial  truth  of  great  value;  but  not  the  whole 
truth;  and  this  fact  alone,  even  if  that  which  they  ignore 
did  not  deserve  primality  would  render  these  theories,  at 
least  in  part,  erroneous.  Few  who  have  tried  to  reform 
an  idler,  spendthrift,  liar,  cheat,  thief,  gambler,  glutton, 
drunkard,  or  rake  can  have  failed  to  recognize  how  few 
practical  results  follow  upon  explanations,  warnings,  or 
arguments  addressed  to  his  mere  reasoning  faculties.  The 
appeal  to  these,  even  when  presented  with  the  most  irrefut- 
able logic,  seems  often  to  have  absolutely  no  effect  upon 
either  his  conceptions  or  conduct.  Many  a  man  has  been 
told  and  convinced  by  his  physician  that  smoking  tobacco 
or  drinking  whiskey  is  impairing  his  health,  but  this  does  not 
prevent  his  desiring  to  do  it,  and  so  strongly  too  as  actually 
to  continue  to  do  it.  This  certainly  would  not  be  the  case 
if  to  understand,  to  infer,  or  to  conclude  were  the  same  thing 
as  to  desire.  While  it  is  true,  that  results  of  reasoning 
and  the  conclusions  reached  by  them  have  an  influence, 
and  an  important  influence  upon  conduct,  it  is  not  true  that 
such  is  the  case  invariably.  When  it  is  not  the  case  it  is 
because  there  is  still  lacking  some  influence  capable  of  mak- 
ing the  right  course  seem  desirable, — in  other  words  capable 
of  making  an  appeal  to  the  desires, — an  appeal,  that  is, 
to  the  sympathetic  action  of  the  emotional  nature  as  well 
as  to  mere  intelligence.  Does  not  this  explain  why  it  is  so 
widely  recognized  that  the  most  effective  method  of  bring- 
ing into  the  right  path  those  who  have  strayed  from  it  is 
through  an  influence  of  personality  exerted  either  in  private 
or  public  conduct,  conversation,  or  address. 

Is  not  this  the  reason  underlying  the  movements  that, 
of  late  years,  have  found  expression  in  the  "social  settle- 
ment" and  the  "institutional  church?"  And,  to  make  a 
broader  and  deeper  application  of  the  same  suggestion,  is  it 
not  the  reason  underlying  the  fact  that  all  reforms,  whether 
political,  social,  or  religious,  in  the  degree  in  which  their 
influence  upon  communities  has  been  thorough,  widespread, 
and  permanent,  have  been  associated  with  some  prominent 
person.  Now  and  then  too,  this  person,  as  has  been  sup- 
posed in  the  cases  of  Confucius  and  Socrates,  may  have  had 
less  to  do  with  the  actual  shaping  of  the  reform  than  some 


46  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

of  his  followers  like  Mencius  and  Plato,  yet  to  the  world 
he  has  seemed  to  embody  and  represent  it;  and  this  has 
added  greatly  to  its  earliest  and  its  latest  popularity. 
Many  more  to-day  are  Buddhists,  Mohammedans,  or  Chris- 
tians because  of  what  they  know  or  think  that  they  know 
about  the  founder  of  one  of  these  systems,  than  because 
of  any  knowledge  of  the  principles  actuating  him,  or  any 
serious  endeavor  to  follow  in  his  footsteps. 

The  relation  between  desire  and  the  last  of  the  cognitive 
faculties  which  are  tabulated  on  page  38  still  remains  to  be 
considered.  This  is  what  has  been  termed  the  formulating 
power  and,  as  related  to  conduct,  it  seems  to  be  the  most 
important  of  all  of  them.  It  is  the  faculty  that  enables  the 
mind  to  present  to  itself  in  a  clearly  apprehensible  form  the 
constructed  results  of  its  own  thinking.  The  form  is 
the  final  effect  of  psychical  processes — though  it  sometimes 
immediately  accompanies  them — such  as  are  represented  in 
the  previous  lists  in  the  tabulation.  In  the  degree  in  which 
this  effect  is  more  vaguely  or  more  definitely  conceived,  we 
term  the  ideas  that  produce  it  general  or  specific.  But  not  as 
mere  ideas  do  they  exert  the  most  influence  upon  conduct. 
They  do  this  when  the  ideas  become  what  are  termed  ideals. 
When  do  they  become  these?  It  is  when,  in  connection 
with  ideas,  another  influence  operates.  This  influence  is 
defined  by  the  suffix  al  which  means  pertaining  to.  An 
ideal  is  something  pertaining  to  an  idea.  And  what  is  this 
something?  What  can  it  be  but  the  underlying  energy  or 
tendency  in  the  mind  that  animates  the  idea,  and  which,  as 
has  been  said  before,  reveals  itself  to  consciousness  as  a 
desire?  An  ideal  is  a  desire  that  has  pushed  through  the 
different  possibilities  in  the  region  of  ideas  till  finally  it  has 
embodied  itself  in  one  or  more  of  them.  So  we  see  that 
the  same  principle  which  renders  the  influence  of  desires 
necessary  before  the  mind  is  fitted  to  avail  itself  of  the 
ethical  teachings  of  experience,  information,  or  reason- 
ing, applies  still  more  forcibly  to  the  effects  of  ideals. 
Indeed,  these  effects  seem  so  important  to  some  that,  as 
will  be  noticed  in  a  quotation  in  a  footnote  on  page  67, 
Professor  Josiah  Royce  (1865- 191 6)  identifies  them  with 
the  effects  of  conscience;  and  very  nearly  the  same  is 
done  by  Professor  Warner  Fite  (1867-  )  of  Princeton 
University  when,  in  his  Introductory  Study  of  Ethics,  he 
associates  the  attaining  of  the  end  of  obligation  to  the 


IDEALS  47 

maintaining  in  the  pursuit  of  the  ideal,  a  "maximum  of 
sustained  progress." 

The  ideas  expressed  in  ideals  differ  in  the  degrees  of  dis- 
tinctness with  which  through  the  representative  faculty 
they  are  made  to  appeal  to  consciousness.  Sometimes  only 
a  vague  impression  is  produced;  sometimes  a  vivid  picture. 
In  either  case,  the  result  can  be  attributed  to  the  imagin- 
ation. This  is  the  source  of  any  influence  that,  in  any  de- 
gree, tends  to  collect  within  the  outlines  of  an  apprehensible 
image — by  which  is  meant  a  form — thoughts  that,  otherwise, 
could  not  be  clearly  conceived.  When  a  young  man  says 
that  he  has  an  ideal  of  what  a  professional,  married,  or 
religious  life  should  be,  he  may,  or  he  may  not  be  thinking 
of  a  picture  representing  to  his  conception  certain  phases 
of  this  life.  But,  in  each  case,  he  is  exercising  his  imagin- 
ation; and,  almost  invariably  in  connection  with  the  unrep- 
resentable conditions  of  this,  pictures  of  it  are  emerging  into 
his  consciousness.  The  substance  of  these  pictures,  whether 
composed  of  sights  or  sounds  is  always  taken  from  the 
physical  world  about  him.  For  this  reason,  some  confound 
the  work  of  imagination  with  that  of  imitation,  such  as 
characterizes  the  antics  of  an  ape  or  the  tones  of  a  parrot. 
But  the  object  of  imitation  is  attained  when  it  reproduces 
reality.  Imagination  does  more  than  this.  It  presents 
reality  that  it  may  represent  ideality,  selecting  and  arrang- 
ing effects  of  nature  which  can  be  seen  and  heard  in  such  ways 
that  the  thoughts  and  feelings  which  men  naturally  associ- 
ate with  these  effects  shall,  by  means  of  them,  be  com- 
municated to  the  mind,  either  of  oneself  or  of  others.  This 
difference  between  the  work  of  imitation  and  of  imagination 
is  important .  It  distinguishes  the  conception  not  only  of  the 
aim  of  small  art  from  that  of  great  art ;  but  of  the  results  of 
lower  animal  intelligence  from  those  of  human  intelligence. 

The  thought-life  of  the  lower  animal,  so  far  as  he  possesses 
any  of  it,  and  the  thought-life  of  the  man,  so  far  as  he  is 
merely  like  a  lower  animal,  is  started  into  activity  and 
developed  from  that  which  appeals  to  him  through  coming 
into  contact  with  his  bodily  senses.  On  the  contrary,  the 
thought-life  of  the  human  being,  though  influenced  to  some 
extent  through  the  bodily  senses,  as  is  that  of  the  lower 
animal,  is  also  influenced  by  thought  which  is  started  into 
activity  and  developed  from  that  which  appeals  from  the 
distinctive  region  of  the  mind  or  of  "pure  reason"  as  Kant 


48  E  THICS  AND  NAT  URAL  LA  W 

put  it.  All  the  results  of  information  and  thinking  have  an 
influence  upon  his  intelligent  life;  but  the  clearest  and  most 
decisive  influence  is  exerted  by  what  have  been  termed 
ideals.  We  cannot  conceive  of  a  lower  animal  as  living  in  a 
world  of  ideals;  nor  of  a  man,  rightly  constituted  and  mani- 
festing his  best  possibilities,  as  not  doing  so. 

Every  human  being,  merely  because  he  has  a  mind  as 
well  as  a  body,  has  an  ideal  of  some  kind  just  as  he  has 
higher  desires.  His  ideal,  however — and  this  is  an  import- 
ant fact  to  bear  in  mind — must  be  framed  out  of  the  ideas 
that  he  possesses.  An  "inner  light"  can  do  no  more  than 
reveal — though  it  can  often  too  very  differently  color — the 
contents  of  that  within  the  mind  upon  which  it  shines.  For 
this  reason,  even  though  one's  desires  be  very  high,  the  ideals 
to  which  they  actuate  him  may  be  very  low  because  of  his 
ignorance  or  lack  of  mental  training.  In  addition  to  this, 
though  his  ideal  itself  may  be  high,  his  lower  desires,  as  in 
the  cases  of  many  drunkards,  gamblers,  and  rakes,  may  so 
overbalance  the  influence  of  what  is  higher  as  not  to  allow  it 
expression. 

But  whether  his  ideal  be  low  or  high,  the  culmination  of 
that  which  separates  him  from  the  lower  animal  is  found  in 
the  fact  that,  through  all  the  possibilities  in  which  the  spirit 
within  him  is  expressed,  he  can  live,  and  always  lives  in  part, 
and  sometimes  lives  almost  wholly,  in  a  world  of  imagin- 
ation. This  fact  is  evinced  in  connection  with  about  every- 
thing that  he  thinks  or  does.  A  large  part  of  the  normal 
child's  experience — and  the  largest  part  of  all  that  he  thor- 
oughly enjoys — is  made  up  of  what  he  imagines  that  he 
might  be  and  do,  if  he  were  an  older  person,  or,  at  least, 
were  not  himself.  In  earlier  times  than  ours,  before  the 
days  of  toys,  most  of  the  objects  with  which  he  played  were 
merely  symbols,  not,  in  any  sense,  accurate  imitations  of 
that  which  they  represented  to  his  mind.  But,  for  all  this, 
he  probably  enjoyed  them  none  the  less.  Indeed,  as  it  is,  he 
frequently  uses  toys  to  represent  something  else  than  that 
which  they  resemble;  and  when  playing  with  them,  or 
bounding  along  the  street,  or  humming  in  rhythm  to  his  own 
movements,  it  is  often  impossible  to  infer  from  anything 
that  we  see  in  him  or  hear  from  him  what  it  is  that  is  occupy- 
ing his  imagination.  The  same  is  true  of  a  man, — of  any 
man  who  is  really  doing  efficient  work.  It  is  not  what  he 
sees,  either  in  his  home  or  business  that  chiefly  inspires 


IDEALITY  49 

his  actions;  but  the  vision  filling  his  imagination, — the 
picture  before  him  of  what  might  be,  should  be,  and,  as  he 
feels,  can  be.  No  matter  whether  he  be  master  or  servant, 
builder  or  helper,  promoter  or  producer,  the  true  measure 
of  the  success  for  which  he  may  hope  is,  for  him,  determined 
less  by  the  real  result  of  the  present  than  by  the  ideal  pos- 
sibility of  the  future.  His  worthiest  share  toward  the  up- 
building of  his  race  is  contributed  in  the  exact  degree  in 
which  he  dreams  himself  to  be  less  a  citizen  of  the  actual 
city  that  he  sees  than  of  the  ''New  Jerusalem  coming  down 
from  God  out  of  heaven."     (Rev.  21:2). 

Since  the  time  of  Plato,  the  influence  upon  conduct  of 
ideas,  including  that  of  the  ideal,  has  been  very  generally 
admitted.  Few  would  take  exception  to  the  association 
with  the  action  of  conscience,  by  Professor  J.  Mark  Baldwin 
(1861-  )  inPart  III.,  Chapter  XIV.  of  his  Handbook  of  Psy- 
chology of  ' '  moral  quality,  moral  authority,  and  moral  ideal." 
At  the  same  time,  more  could  be  made  of  this  latter  than  has 
been  made.  It  is  really  the  culminating — almost  the  con- 
summating— effect  in  the  mind  of  all  the  processes  of  think- 
ing started  into  action  by  desire, — the  final  concrete  result 
of  the  mind's  possibilities  of  intellection, — the  shining  goal, 
as  it  were,  upon  which  every  one  of  its  reasoning  efforts  are 
f  ocussed.  The  author  once  was  leading  a  small  boy  toward 
shelter  from  a  violent  electric  storm  that  was  beginning. 
The  boy  begged  to  be  allowed  to  stay  out  of  doors,  because, 
as  he  said,  he  wanted  to  be  where,  when  the  lightning 
flashed,  he  could  look  up  and  see  heaven.  What  the  boy 
imagined  that  he  saw  outwardly,  every  man,  at  times, 
imagines  that  he  sees  inwardly;  and,  as  in  the  case  of  the 
boy,  it  is  more  likely  than  not  to  be  perceived  through  and 
above  the  rifting  clouds  of  a  surrounding  storm.  That 
which  starts  mental  activity  causing  one  to  look  upward  is 
the  higher  desire  in  him  which,  for  the  time  being,  at  least, 
has  gained  a  mastery  over  lower  desire.  That  which  stands 
between  the  senses  and  the  object  of  desire  is  an  accumu- 
lation within  his  mind  of  certain  inheritances,  tendencies, 
associations,  traditions,  reflections,  inferences,  speculations, 
or  judgments,  all  involved  in  intellection,  and  often  serving 
merely  to  becloud  and  obscure  the  mental  outlook.  But 
just  as  the  flash  and  glow  of  light  from  the  sky  can  organize 
that  which  threatens  darkness  into  the  grandeur  of  the 
storm  and  the  glory  of  the  sunset,  so  often  can  the  inward 


50  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

light  reflected  from  the  goal  of  aspiration  turn  that  which 
has  caused  obscurity  and  confusion  in  the  mind  into  visions 
of  the  highest  beauty  and  inspiration. 

Perhaps  this  chapter  should  not  close  without  a  suggestion 
with  reference  to  one  reason,  at  least,  why,  in  the  present 
world,  notwithstanding  the  ideals  of  our  higher  nature  and 
our  consciousness  of  the  far  greater  importance  that  should 
be  attached  to  them  than  to  the  influences  coming  from  our 
lower  nature,  nevertheless  all  the  time  we  are  subject,  more 
or  less,  to  these  latter.  Why,  in  this  life,  is  the  mental 
always  hampered  by  the  bodily?  The  only  logical  explana- 
tion is  that,  for  some  reason,  the  presence  of  the  bodily  is 
necessary  for  mental  development.  What  soil  and  seed  are 
to  flower  and  fragrance,  matter  and  flesh  seem  to  be  to  mind 
and  thought.  The  bodily  man,  apparently,  is  the  mold  in 
which  the  mental  man  is  shaped.  It  is  conceivable  that  if 
a  dog  had  the  articulating  organs  and  the  hands  of  a  human 
being,  he  might  be  able  to  formulate  thought,  discriminate 
difference,  use  language  and  produce  objects  of  workmanship 
almost  as  successfully  as  if  human.  At  any  rate,  we  know 
that  the  man  himself  could  not  do  these  things  unless  he 
had  a  body  and  a  brain  physically  formed  as  they  are. 

These  facts  need  only  to  be  recognized  in  order  to  suggest 
a  conception  of  life  and  its  possibilities  inconceivably  con- 
soling and  inspiring.  It  is  consoling  because  it  explains  in 
the  same  way  as  does  the  theory  of  development,  but  still 
more  clearly  than  that,  the  reason  for  the  disappointments 
and  disasters  with  which  every  life  is  at  times  afflicted. 
Very  often  it  is  only  through  the  disciplinary  experience 
imparted  through  these  that  one  who  would  advance  to 
high  achievement  can  learn  what  to  do  and  what  not  to  do. 
The  sooner  he  recognizes  this  fact,  the  better  will  he  be  able 
to  bear  his  troubles  and  the  more  benefit  will  he  derive  from 
them.  But  the  conception  is  inspiring  too.  As  intimated 
before,  it  gives  a  rational  ground  for  entertaining  a  hope 
that,  at  some  time,  in  some  way,  in  part  if  not  in  whole, 
mental  desires  shall  be  fulfilled,  and  one's  ideals  realized. 


CHAPTER  IV 

man's  consciousness  of  conflict  between  desires  of 
the  body  and  of  the  mind 


Recapitulation — Consciousness  of  Conflict  between  Desires  sometimes 
Slight — When  not  so,  the  Opposition  Is  between  the  Desires  of  the 
Body  and  of  the  Mind — This  Fact  Is  often  Overlooked;  but  Is 
Fundamental — the  Fact  Accepted  by  Many  Writers  who  have  not 
Recognized  its  Full  Import — The  Consciousness  of  Conflict  be- 
tween Desires  of  the  Body  and  of  the  Mind  Necessitates  Feelings 
of  Unrest,  Discomfort,  etc. — Also  of  Obligation  to  Put  an  End  to 
Them — And,  to  Use  all  the  Mental  Powers  in  Determining  and 
Directing  the  Methods  of  Ending  them — Nature  Prompts  every 
Man  because  he  Is  a  Man  to  Subordinate  the  Bodily  to  the  Mental 
— In  the  Consciousness  of  a  Conflict  that  should  be  Ended  thus 
we  Become  Aware  of  what  is  Termed  Conscience. 

IN  the  preceding  chapters,  it  has  been  shown  that  a  child 
inherits  from  his  parents  certain  propensities  which  are 
partly  of  the  body  and  partly  of  the  mind;  and  that, 
corresponding  to  this,  the  earliest  manifestations  of  per- 
sonal consciousness  on  his  own  part  are  furnished  through 
expressions  of  desires  of  the  same  differing  character.  They 
first  cause  him  to  wish  for  food  for  which  he  feels  a  bodily 
appetite;  but,  almost  simultaneously,  he  gives  evidence  of 
a  wish  for  that  which  shall  reach  his  mind  through  his  eyes 
and  ears,  as  when  his  mother  diverts  his  attention  from  the 
cravings  of  hunger  by  twirling  a  glittering  object  or  singing 
a  lullaby.  We  are  justified  in  thinking,  therefore,  that  his 
earliest  consciousness  is  a  consciousness  of  desires,  which  in 
their  appeal  to  him  have  in  them  the  possibility  of  manifest- 
ing qualities  that  are  antagonistic  to  one  another;  and,  be- 
sides this,  that,  as  he  goes  on  to  maturity,  at  the  basis  of 
almost  every  thought  or  volition  he  becomes  more  clearly 
aware  of  this  possibility.  So  long  as  helives  on  earth,  and 
possesses  any  consciousness  whatever,  it  is  impossible  for 

51 


52  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

him  to  escape  from  a  consciousness  of  desires  within  him 
that  at  times,  may  be  in  conflict. 

Very  often,  this  conflict  may  be  so  slight  that  one  hardly 
recognizes  its  existence,  as,  for  instance,  when  he  is  asked 
whether  he  will  drink  coffee  or  chocolate.  But  even  this 
question  may  awaken  in  him  a  consciousness  of  opposing 
influences.  In  view  of  some  nervous  disorder,  his  physician 
may  have  advised  him  against  the  use  of  the  one  but  not  ofc 
the  other.  In  this  case,  the  conflict  may  reveal  itself  as  no 
longer  occasioned  by  a  difference  between  two  desires  of  the 
body,  but  between  a  bodily  desire  and  a  desire  of  the 
mind  to  be  controlled  by  one's  own  reason,  in  view  of  the 
opinions  of  another  whose  judgment  he  respects.  Or  let 
one  be  deciding  between  reading  a  certain  novel  or  a  poem. 
If  both  courses  appeal  to  him  as  the  fulfillment  merely  of  a 
desire  of  the  mind,  the  difference  between  the  two  will  prob- 
ably appear  to  him  to  be  slight ;  but  if  persons  who  have  a 
right  to  exercise  authority  over  him  have  forbidden  him  to 
read  fiction  but  not  poetry,  or  have  presented  arguments 
that  appeal  to  him  as  reasonable  against  reading  this 
particular  fiction,  then  the  conflict  may  reveal  itself  as  no 
longer  occasioned  by  a  difference  between  two  desires  of  the 
mind.  One  of  the  desires — because  it  is  so  selfishly  self- 
opinionated  as  to  involve  disobedience  to  those  in  authority, 
and  is,possibly,  so  self-indulgent  as  to  involve  expectation  of 
participating  through  imagination  in  the  wrong  doing  sup- 
posed to  be  portrayed  in  the  book — may  be,  according  to 
the  explanation  given  on  pages  19-23,  almost  entirely  of  the 
body,  while  the  other  desire,  according  to  the  same  ex- 
planation, may  be  of  the  mind. 

Of  course,  even  in  the  former  case,  more  or  less  desire  of 
the  mind  may  be  present.  The  mere  fact  that  one  wishes  to 
read  at  all  is  a  sufficient  proof  of  this.  But,  as  said  on  page 
8,  desires  are  often  mixed  in  character,  and  this  to  such  an 
extent  that  it  may  be  extremely  difficult  to  distinguish  the 
different  elements  of  which  they  are  compounded.  The 
only  thing  that  can  be  done  with  any  approach  to  certainty, 
is  to  recognize  that,  in  a  given  case,  a  desire  is  predominantly 
of  the  body  or  predominantly  of  the  mind.  It  is  extremely 
important,  however,  to  observe  that,  wherever  there  is  a 
perfectly  clear  consciousness  of  moral  conflict,  the  opposing 
desires  are  traceable  entirely  or  mainly  to  the  former  on  the 
one  side  and  to  the  latter  on  the  other. 


HIGHER  AND  LOWER  DESIRES  53  ' 

It  is  important  to  notice  also  that  the  contests  between 
these  different  classes  of  desires  are  not  to  be  rated  as  if  they 
were  of  the  same  character  as  contests  between  desires  of  the 
same  class.  A  man,  for  instance,  who  has  lost  his  savings 
through  unwise  investments  may  say  that  he  has  done 
wrong ;  but  no  one  would  accuse  him  of  having  done  morally 
wrong,  unless,  at  the  time  when  he  decided  upon  the  specu- 
lations that  have  ended  disastrously,  he  subordinated  higher 
desire,  like  that  inclining  him  to  enterprise,  to  lower  de- 
sire like  that  inclining  him  to  greed  This  fact  that,  when- 
ever a  man  is  aware  of  a  contrast  between  what  is  morally 
right  and  what  is  morally  wrong,  it  is  because  of  a  con- 
sciousness of  conflict  within  him  between  higher  and  lower 
desires,  or  between  the  results  of  these  desires  as  de- 
veloped in  processes  of  thinking,  is  important  because  by 
many  it  is  either  overlooked  entirely  or  so  largely  ignored 
as  not  to  be  assigned  its  due  significance.  For  instance, 
James  Martineau  (i 805-1900)  in  his  Types  of  Ethical 
Theory,  Psychological  Ethics,  Book  I.,  Chapter  I.,  starting 
out  with  what  conforms  in  principle  at  least  to  the  influence 
attributed  in  this  volume  to  desire,  says  that,  in  deciding 
upon  moral  conduct,  "What  we  judge  is  always  the  inner 
spring  of  our  actions,"  and  he  confirms  the  general  agree- 
ment of  writers  upon  ethics  with  reference  to  this  fact  by 
quotations  from  Herbert  Spencer,  Leslie  Stephen,  F.  H. 
Bradley,  T.  H.  Green,  and  James  Mill.  After  this  he  goes 
on  to  say,  in  Chapter  IV.,  that  "Each  separate  verdict  of 
right  and  wrong  pronounces  some  one  impulse  (or  spring  of 
action)  to  be  of  higher  worth  than  a  competitor.  .  .  Each 
must  come  in  turn  to  have  its  relative  value  determined  in 
comparison  with  the  rest."  All  this  is  true;  but  when  he 
adds  that  "by  collecting  this  series  of  decisions  into  a  system 
we  must  find  ourselves  in  possession  of  a  table  of  moral 
obligation,  graduated  according  to  the  inner  excellence  of 
our  several  tendencies,"  and  attempts  to  tabulate  these 
according  to  "their  ascending  order  and  worth, "  he  reaches 
a  result  that  few  find  satisfactory.  One  reason  for  this  is 
owing  to  the  fact  that  he  has  not  drawn  any  preliminary 
distinction  between  lower  and  higher  tendencies  based 
upon  a  difference  between  those  that  are  partly  or  wholly  of 
the  body  and  partly  or  wholly  of  the  mind.  His  lowest, 
for  instance,  includes  censoriousness  which,  is  partly  of  the 
mind,  his  third  the  appetites,  which  are  wholly  of  the  body, 


54  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

and  his  eleventh  and  twelfth,  which  is  within  one  of  the 
highest,  include  the  affections,  parental,  social,  and  com- 
passionate, which  are  partly  of  the  body.  A  far  more 
acceptable  statement  of  the  partial  truth  in  Martineau's 
conception,  because  expressed  in  less  specific  terms  and 
confined  to  that  which  is  indisputable,  is  that  of  Professor  J. 
Mark  Baldwin  (i  861-  )  formerly  of  Princeton  University  in 
Part  III.,  Chapter  IX.,  Sec.  7  of  his  Handbook  of  Psychology. 
"The  determination  of  conduct  in  the  concrete,"  he  says, 
"as  morally  imperative  takes  place  by  a  reaction  of  con- 
sciousness upon  a  group  of  alternatives  in  such  a  way  that 
these  alternatives  are  arranged  in  a  scale  of  value  with  refer- 
ence to  the  moral  ideal  and  to  one  another ;  the  highest  value 
being  approved  as  rationally  right  and  the  other  disap- 
proved as  rationally  wrong."  But  acknowledging,  as  one 
must,  that  this  is  true  does  not  involve  his  rejecting  the 
theory  that  the  "highest  value  .  .  approved  as  ration- 
ally right"  may  be  so  approved  because  one  action  mani- 
fests to  a  greater  degree  than  another  the  influence  of  mind 
as  contrasted  with  that  of  the  body.  To  trace  any  number 
of  differing  results  of  higher  or  lower  value  to  one  underlying 
differentiation  between  two  sources  of  desire  is  merely  to  get 
nearer  to  that  which  is  logically  necessitated  in  order  to  ex- 
plain the  conditions. 

That  this  is  so  seems  to  have  been  recognized — how  could 
it  fail  of  recognition  ? — over  and  over  again  by  writers  upon 
ethics;  but  for  some  strange  reason  it  has  been  recognized 
only  incidentally  and  indirectly,  with  no  comprehensive 
appreciation  of  its  superlative  importance.  Notwithstand- 
ing the  fact  that  these  writers  have  directed  attention  to 
the  bodily  or  physical  and  the  mental  or  rational,  together 
with  their  respective  results,  each  has  selected  something 
else  than  the  antagonism  between  these  as  the  basis  of  his 
ethical  system.  Notice,  in  the  quotations  at  the  bottom 
of  the  page  the  way  in  which  what  is  right  and  what  is 
wrong  in  a  man's  conduct  is  referred  to  the  opposing  prompt- 
ings of  these  two  classes  of  desire.2     In  order  to  direct 

2  Years  ago,  Plato  (430-350  B.  c.)  in  his  Phaedo,  24  and  32,  reported 
Socrates  (468-399  b.  c.)  as  saying:  "Does  not  the  philosopher  above 
all  men  evidently  free  his  soul  as  much  as  he  can  from  communion  with 
the  body?  .  .  .  what  is  purification  but  the  separations  of  the  soul  or  the 
mind  from  the  body. "  The  same  general  thought  has  been  continued 
through  all  the  ages  and  has  been  expressed  by  most  of  the  scientists  and 


CONFLICT  BETWEEN  MIND  AND  BODY  55 

attention  to  that  which  the  quotations  illustrate,  the  author 
has  inserted  in  the  text  an  occasional  word  or  phrase  in- 
closed in  parentheses  indicating  his  own  interpretations. 

From  this  conflict  between  body  and  mind  which  ap- 
parently few  deny,  however  disinclined  to  concede  its  due 
importance,  three  inferences  seem  inevitable.  The  first  is 
that  the  consciousness  of  the  conflict  necessitates  a  con- 
sciousness also  of  unrest,  annoyance,  discomfort,  and,  in 
aggravated  cases,  of  positive  distress.  Few  cries  can  be 
more  tragic  in  effect  than  are  expressed  in  the  words  "  What 
shall  I  do?  What  shall  I  do?"  which  are  sometimes  heard 
coming  from  a  soul  that  has  been  made  the  battlefield  of 
such  a  conflict. 

The  second  inference  is  that  this  consciousness  of  conflict 
within  necessitates  a  consciousness  also  that  something 
ought  to  be  done  to  cause  the  conflict  to  cease.     In  other 

philosophers  of  our  own  day.  Professor  A.  P.  Peabody  (1811-1895)  of 
Harvard  University,  in  his  fourth  Lecture  on  Moral  Philosophy  says,  "A 
personisrealizingthehighestgood  when  the  so-calledlower  (bodily  orphy- 
sical)  forces  are  subordinated  to  the  highest  (mental  or)  spiritual  forces. ' ' 
Professor  T.  H.  Huxley  (1 825-1 895)  in  his  essay  on  Evolution  and  Ethics, 
says  that ' '  The  practice  of  that  which  is  ethically  (mentally  or  spiritu- 
ally) best.  .  .  .  involves  a  course  of  conduct  which,  in  all  respects  is 
opposed  to  that  which  leads  to  success  in  the  cosmic  (bodily  or  physical) 
struggle  for  existence. "  Professor  Frederick  Paulsen  (1846- 1908)  of  the 
University  of  Berlin,  says  in  the  Introduction  to  Book  II.  of  his  System 
of  Ethics  translated  by  Professor  Frank  Thilly,  "The  rational  (mental) 
will  governed  by  an  ideal  subjects  the  lower  forms  of  will,  impulse  and 
desire,  which  exist  even  in  man  as  natural  (bodily  or  physical)  pre- 
dispositions to  constant  criticism  and  a  process  of  selection.  This 
criticism  we  call  conscience."  Professor  T.  H.  Green  (1 836-1 882)  of 
Oxford  University,  says,  in  Book  III.,  Chapter  III.,  Section  16  of  his 
Prolegomena  of  Ethics  that  "the  individual  conscience  (in  man)  is 
reason  (mind)  in  him  as  informed  by  the  work  of  reason  without  him  in 
the  structure  and  controlling  sentiments  of  society.  The  basis  of  that 
structure,  the  source  of  these  sentiments,  can  only  be  a  self -objectifying 
spirit;  a  spirit  through  the  action  of  which  beings  such  as  we  are,  en- 
dowed with  certain  animal  (bodily)  susceptibilities  and  affected  by  cer- 
tain natural  sympathies  become  capable  of  striving  after  some  (mental) 
bettering  or  fulfillment  of  themselves  which  they  conceive  as  an  absolute 
good,  and  in  which  they  include  a  like  betterment  or  fulfillment  of 
others."  Professor  Henry  Sidgwick  (1838-1901)  of  Cambridge  University 
says  in  Book  I.  Chapter  III.  of  his  Methods  of  Ethics,  "The  conflict  of 
practical  (mental)  reason  with  (bodily)  desire  remains  an  indisputable 
fact  in  our  conscious  experience."  Professor  J.  T.  Bixby  (1843-  ) 
of  Meadville  Theological  Seminary,  says,  in  Part  II.,  Chapter  III.,  of 
The  Ethics  of  Evolution  that  the  end  of  a  man's  morality  is  "the  develop- 
ment of  his  spiritual  (mental  and  rational)  personality  to  the  fullest, 


56  E  THICS  A  ND  NA  T  URAL  LA  W 

words,  a  man  is  made  conscious  of  what  may  be  termed,  in 
its  graver  developments  at  least,  an  obligation  to  bring  an 
end  to  the  condition  within  him, — an  obligation  of  greater 
or  less  seriousness  according  to  the  greater  or  less  serious- 
ness of  the  issues  that  appear  to  be  at  stake.  "  Obligation  " 
says  Professor  Frank  Thilly  (1865-  )  of  Cornell  Uni- 
versity) in  Chapter  III.,  Sec.  3  of  his  Introduction  to  Ethics 
"is  not  a  special  category  or  form  of  the  reason;  it  is  a  prin- 
ciple fact  which  is  never  found  in  consciousness  apart  from 
other  mental  states."  That  this  sense  of  obligation  must 
accompany  the  consciousness  of  conflict  seems  to  be  self- 
evident.  When  one  becomes  aware  of  even  a  slight  irrita- 
tion on  merely  the  surface  of  the  body,  he  pays  attention  to 
it  not  only,  but  he  feels  soon  that  he  must  begin  to  do 
something  in  order  to  prevent  it,  or  to  end  it;  that  he  must 
scratch  it,  or  use  a  salve  upon  it.  It  would  be  out  of  analogy 
for  him  not  to  feel  similarly  with  reference  to  an  irritation 
experienced  amid  the  far  more  sensitive  conditions  of  the 
inner  mind. 


noblest,  and  highest  life  possible."  Professor  Rudolph  Eucken  (1846-  ) 
of  the  University  of  Jena,  in  Chapter  II.  of  Ethics  and  Modern  Thought, 
translated  by  Margaret  Sezdewitz,  speaks  of  the  "Spiritual  (mental) 
force  that  exalts  us  above  the  animal  (bodily)  world. "  "Morality  "  he 
tells  us  "elevates  the  fact  that  all  the  variety  of  work  is  dominated  by 
strife  for  a  spiritual  self.  "  T.  D.  Stork  (1854-  )  in  his  Hints  toward 
a  Theory  of  Ethics,  says  ' '  There  you  have  ethics  in  a  sentence .... 
It  is  the  eternal  conflict  of  the  right  of  (mental)  duty  and  the  desire  of 
bodily  appetite.  "  Professor  Henri  Bergson  (1859-  )  of  the  College 
of  France  expresses,  in  Chapter  III.,  pages  268-9,  °f  Creative  Evolution 
trans,  by  Dr.  Arthur  Mitchell,  an  almost  identical  conception  when  he 
says  that  "philosophy  introduces  us  into  the  spiritual  life,  and  it  shows 
us  at  the  same  time,  the  relation  of  the  life  of  the  spirit  (and  mind)  to 
that  of  the  body."  "A  philosophy  of  intuition  will  be  a  negation  of 
science,  will  be  sooner  or  later  swept  away  by  science,  if  it  does  not  re- 
solve to  see  that  life  of  the  body  just  where  it  really  is,  on  the  road  that 
leads  to  the  life  of  the  spirit. ' '  Professor  James  Seth  ( 1 860-)  of  Edinburgh 
University  says  in  Chapter  III.,  Section  13  of  A  Study  of  Ethical  Prin- 
ciples, "The  demand  is  for  such  a  perfect  mastery  of  the  impulsive 
and  sentient  or  natural  (bodily)  self,  that  in  it  the  true  self  which  is 
fundamentally  rational  is  realized, — that  it  may  be  the  rational  or 
human,  and  not  the  merely  sentient  and  animal,  that  lives."  Professor 
Charles  G.  Shaw  (1871 — )  of  the  New  York  University  in  Part  II., 
Chapter  I.,  Section  2  of  The  Value  and  Dignity  of  Life,  says  "It  is  the 
destiny  of  man  to  strive ....  The  struggle  is  for  spiritual  life.  A 
creature  of  (animal)  nature,  need  not  hesitate  to  approach  the  psychical 
domain  of  spirit."  L.  S.  Thornton  says,  in  Chapter  V.  of  Part  II.  of  an 
English  Prize  Essay  upon  Conduct  and  the  Supernatural,  "The  natural 


ENERGISM  57 

The  third  inference  is  that  he  must  use  his  mental  powers 
in  determining  and  directing  the  methods  that  shall  end  the 
conflict.  This  is  so  because  the  very  consciousness  that 
makes  him  aware  of  the  conflict  is  itself  a  function  of  the 
mind.  If  he  possessed  merely  a  body,  there  would  be  no 
such  consciousness.  It  is  his  mind  that  occasions  it,  and 
to  this  he  must  look  for  the  influence  that  shall  end  it. 
Indeed,  there  seems  to  be  in  nature  as  a  whole,  irrespective 
of  any  connection  with  morality,  a  tendency  causing  a  man 
in  such  circumstances  as  have  been  indicated  to  fulfill  the 
requirements  of  mental  desire.  The  modern  theory  termed 
energism,  mentioned  on  page  8,  involves  a  recognition  of 
this  tendency.  Energism,  according  to  Professor  Frederick 
Paulsen  (1846-1908),  one  of  its  advocates  (System  of  Ethics, 
Book  II.,  Chapter  II.,  as  translated  by  Frank  Thilly),  holds 
to  the  existence  in  the  mind  of  ' '  inherent  energies  directed 
toward  definite    concrete    activities."      So   far  as    forms 


and  the  spiritual.  In  these  lie  the  two  centers  of  gravity  from  which 
opposing  types  of  conduct  proceed."     Professor  H.  W.  Wright  (1878- 

)  of  Lake  Forest  College  says  in  Chapter  VI.  of  his  Self  Realization,  an 
Outline  of  Ethics, ' '  Man  is  primarily  a  being  ...  of  the  animal  species. 
As  a  self  or  person  he  is  a  (mental)  spiritual  being.  " 

These  opinions  expressed  by  philosophers  will  be  found  to  be  confirmed 
by  innumerable  others  who  have  written  with  merely  a  literary  or  re- 
ligious purpose.  The  novelist  Honore  de  Balzac  (1 798-1 850)  for  in- 
stance, giving  expression,  in  his  Jealousies  of  a  Country  Town,  to  the 
results  of  his  own  keen  powers  of  observation,  says  of  one  of  his  charac- 
ters, Victorian,  "An  indefinable  flaw,  often  seen  in  young  men,  led  him 
to  will  one  thing  and  to  do  another  In  spite  of  an  active  mind,  which 
showed  itself  in  unexpected  ways,  the  (bodily)  senses  had  but  to  assert 
themselves,  and  the  darkened  brain  seemed  to  exist  no  longer.  He 
might  have  astonished  wise  men,  he  was  capable  of  setting  fools  agape. 
His  (lower)  desires  like  a  sudden  squall  of  weather  overclouded  all  the 
clear  and  lucid  spaces  of  his  brain  in  a  moment,  and,  then,  after  the 
dissipations  that  he  could  not  resist,  he  sank  utterly  exhausted  in  body, 
heart,  and  mind,  into  a  collapsed  condition  bordering  upon  imbecility.  " 
The  Apostle  Paul  again  says  in  Rom.  7  :  22-25,  of  his  own  experience, 
"I  delight  in  the  law  of  God  after  the  inward  man.  But  I  see  another 
law  in  my  members  warring  against  the  law  of  my  mind  and  bringing  me 
into  captivity  to  the  law  of  sin  which  is  in  my  (bodily)  members.  With 
the  mind,  I  myself  serve  the  law  of  God,  but  with  the  flesh  (the  body) 
the  law  of  sin.  Oh  wretched  man  that  I  am,  who  shall  deliver  me  from 
the  body  of  this  death?"  The  answer  to  this  question,  of  course,  is 
that  deliverance  must  come  through  some  influence,  that,  in  some  way — 
a  way  that  will  be  discussed  in  following  chapters  of  this  book — shall 
harmonize,  and,  in  cases  where  this  is  necessary,  subordinate  that  which 
is  of  the  body  to  that  which  is  of  the  mind. 


58  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

developed  according  to  the  processes  of  nature  have  in 
them  a  force  that  pushes  them  outward  and  onward 
along  the  line  of  their  own  possibilities,  they  necessarily 
give  prominence  and  emphasis  to  characteristics  that 
distinguish  them  from  other  products  or  sets  of  products. 
This  fact  is  especially  noticeable  wherever  the  differen- 
tiating features  are  such  as  indicate  membership  in  a  higher 
class  than  that  to  which  a  product  but  for  them  might 
be  assigned.  We  are  accustomed,  for  instance,  to  rank 
human  beings  higher  than  animals,  animals  higher  than 
vegetables,  and  vegetables  higher  than  minerals.  In  each 
of  these  departments  of  life,  nature  seems  to  be  prompt- 
ing its  members  with  as  much  persistence,  apparently,  as 
if  they  were  consciously  struggling  to  give  evidence  of  their 
superiority,  to  keep  pushing  to  the  front  the  traits  that  dis- 
tinguish them  from  the  members  of  a  department  lower  than 
their  own.  Among  the  vegetables,  leaves,  flowers  and  fruit 
are  pushed  to  the  front;  and  so  among  the  animals,  are  legs, 
wings,  arms,  and  other  means  of  locomotion.  As  agencies 
of  locomotion  too,  those  that  are  emphasized  are  always  the 
ones  that  are  supposed  to  exhibit  a  higher  range  of  ability. 
If  a  creature  can  crawl,  he  crawls;  if  he  can  also  walk,  he 
chiefly  walks;  if  he  can  also  fly,  and  fly  well,  he  chiefly  flies; 
if  he  can  make  a  noise  with  his  mouth,  he  lets  his  presence 
be  known  by  making  it,  and  chiefly  produces  the  kind  of 
sound  peculiar  to  those  of  his  own  class.  He  wheezes, 
growls,  barks,  chirps,  sings,  or  talks.  The  reader  will  recall 
what  Burns  says  of  the  order  of  nature's  development  in 
one  of  these  directions: 

Her  'prentice  han'  she  try'd  on  man 
And  then  she  made  the  lasses,  O! 

— There's  Nought  but  Care. 

And  is  it  not  a  fact  that  the  lasses  talk  more  than  the 
lads? 

It  is  in  strict  fulfillment  of  this  tendency  in  nature  that 
every  man,  in  a  case  where  he  can  perceive  clearly  that  one 
desire  is  wholly  or  mainly  of  the  body,  and  another  of  the 
mind,  and  that  he  cannot  gratify  both  at  one  and  the  same 
time,  feels  under  obligation  to  exert,  if  necessary,  all  the 
energy  of  which  his  personal  will  is  capable  in  order  to  draw 
from  the  resources  of  mentality  within  him  the  strength 
that  shall  enable  it  to  counteract  the  influence  opposed  to 


SENSE  OF  CONFLICT  AND  CONSCIENCE  59 

it.  He  recognizes  almost  as  instinctively  as  he  does  the 
inclination  to  walk  on  two  feet  rather  than  on  feet  and  hands 
that  this  is  the  only  course  which  accords  with  his  character 
as  a  man,  as  the  sole  being  in  the  world  with  highly  devel- 
oped mental  possibilities.  He  knows,  without  listening  to 
argument,  that  it  is  not  in  accordance  with  his  nature  or  the 
end  for  which  it  was  intended  that  he  should  yield  to  the 
promptings  of  passion,  greed,  and  appetite  rather  than  to 
those  of  thought  fulness,  unselfishness,  and  aspiration. 

It  is  difficult  to  conceive  on  what  grounds  anyone  can 
deny  these  statements,  but,  if  they  be  accepted,  notice  the 
inference.  It  is  this — that  with  the  very  earliest  manifesta- 
tions of  consciousness,  the  human  being  begins  to  be  con- 
scious of  conflict  between  the  promptings  of  the  desires  of 
the  body  and  of  the  mind;  and  not  only  so,  but  conscious 
also  that  the  conflict  ought  to  be  made  to  cease,  and  that 
this  end  must  be  attained  by  some  agency  that  can  ad- 
just the  expressional  requirements  of  the  former  to  those  of 
the  latter.  If  these  statements  be  true,  then  in  the  con- 
sciousness of  the  human  being,  merely  because  he  is  con- 
stituted as  he  is,  we  can  find  that  which  philosophers, 
choosing  their  phraseology  with  more  wisdom  than  they 
themselves  have  always  recognized,  have  termed  conscience. 
It  seems  as  if  every  function  of  this,  and  every  limitation  of 
it — its  failure  at  times  to  guide  aright  because  of  a  man's 
being  left  to  fulfill  its  indications  according  to  his  own  judg- 
ment— ought  to  be  capable  of  being  explained  in  accordance 
with  such  a  conception.  If  thus  explainable,  if  conscience, 
with  its  associated  sense  of  obligation  to  seek,  as  an  end,  that 
which  shall  conform  the  requirements  of  the  body  to  those  of 
the  mind,  be  no  more  than  an  inevitable  perception  of 
consciousness  whenever  attention  is  called  to  conflicting 
promptings  between  bodily  and  mental  desires,  then  what 
an  accumulation  of  philosophical  debris  can  the  recognition 
of  these  facts  brush  aside  from  the  pathway  of  the  student 
of  ethics!  He  will  find  no  need  of  having  that  which  in- 
clines to  morality  or  results  from  it  attributed  either  to  a 
special  organ  or  function  of  the  mind,  or  to  a  special  or 
combined  activity  of  organs  never  devoted  to  other  and 
different  purposes.  He  will  find  his  investigations  con- 
fronted not  by  theories  but  by  conditions  with  which  every 
one  is  familiar,  because  made  aware  of  them,  in  almost  the 
first  act  of  testimony  on  the  part  of  his  own  consciousness. 


CHAPTER  V 

ANCIENT  AND  MEDIEVAL   ETHICAL  THEORIES 

Bearing  upon  our  Subject  of  the  History  of  Ethical  Theories — Chief 
Differences  between  these  Concern  the  Source  and  End  of  Obliga- 
tion— Earliest  Moral  Conceptions  Based  upon  a  Sense  of  One's 
Relations  to  Others.  Institutionism  vs.  Individualism — Use  and 
Meaning  of  the  Word  Conscience  in  Greece  and  Rome — Its  Use 
at  the  Present  Time — Intuition  vs.  Instinct — Promptings  of  both 
Attributed  to  Divinity — Other  Moral  Theories,  Essentially  the 
same  in  Ancient  and  in  Modern  Times.  Reason  for  this — Con- 
temporaneous Appearance  in  Greece  of  those  Ascribing  the  Source 
of  Morality  to  Thinking  and  to  Feeling;  to  Reason  and  to  Experi- 
ences of  Pleasure  and  Pain — Criticisms  of  both  Theories — Greek 
Philosophers  who  Combined  both — The  Functional  School,  with 
Suggestions  of  Teleological  and  Utilitarian  Methods — Eudaimon- 
ism — The  Cynic  and  Stoic  Schools — The  Sophist,  Cyrenaic, 
and  Epicurean  Schools — Roman  Stoics  and  Epicureans — Early 
Christian  Ethical  Theories — The  Mystics. 

THE  statement  made  at  the  end  of  the  preceding  chapter 
needs  no  better  confirmation  than  that  afforded  by 
the  history  of  ethical  theories.  This  will  reveal  that 
there  are  only  a  few  of  these  that  differ  radically;  that  the 
same  differences  manifest  themselves  in  every  age,  and  do 
this  in  very  nearly  the  same  order;  and  that  many  of  them 
would  not  manifest  themselves  at  all,  did  their  advocates  go 
into  the  subject  deep  enough  to  discover  that  which  is  un- 
mistakably fundamental  in  it,  and  treat  this  with  sufficient 
comprehensiveness  to  avoid  excluding  those  features  con- 
sidered fundamental  by  others.  These  are  the  reasons  for 
directing  attention  to  the  following  brief  review  of  the  more 
important  of  these  theories. 

The  review  will  show  that  the  chief  differences  between 
them  have  been  occasioned  by  disputes  with  reference  to 
two  questions — one  having  to  do  with  the  source  of  obliga- 
tion, and  the  other  with  the  end  toward  which  conformity 

60 


EARLY  ETHICAL  THEORIES  6 1 

to  obligation  should  be  directed.  In  fact  it  might  almost 
be  said  that  past  ethical  "controversies"  as  well  as  those  "of 
our  own  times,"  as  declared  by  Professor  W.  R.  Sorley 

(J  855 )  of  Cambridge  University,  near  the  opening  of  his 

Recent  Tendencies  in  Ethics,  have  been  "limited  to  the  ques- 
tion of  the  origin  of  moral  ideas, "  which  involves  that  of  the 
source  of  obligation,  "and  the  question  of  the  criterion  of 
moral  value,"  which  involves  that  of  the  end  which  action 
is  aimed  to  accomplish.  After  a  little,  we  shall  find  that 
these  two  questions  are  much  more  closely  connected  than,  at 
first,  one  might  suppose.  Before  considering  this,  however, 
it  is  important  to  notice  the  answers  that  have  been  given 
to  them  in  the  past.  Let  us  turn,  first,  to  the  opinions  held 
by  the  ancient  and  medieval  writers. 

A  sense  of  obligation  usually  impresses  itself  upon  a 
child's  mind  at  the  same  time  as  a  sense  of  his  relations  to 
his  fellows.  He  finds  that  he  cannot  have  or  do  what  he 
wishes  because  others  wish  the  same;  therefore  he  must 
yield  his  wishes  to  theirs,  or  suffer  for  it.  He  is  conscious  of 
this  especially  when  others  have  authority  over  him,  as  in  the 
case  of  a  parent  or  a  teacher.  The  same  is  true  in  the  early 
ages  of  a  race.  Obligation  is  associated  with  men's  con- 
ceptions of  their  relations  to  one  another  in  general,  and  to 
those  in  particular  who  exercise  authority  in  family  or  state. 
It  is  in  strict  accordance  with  this  fact  that  we  find 
the  early  moral  philosopher  of  China,  Confucius  (552-479, 
b.  c.)  who  had  much  more  to  say  than  would  be  expected 
in  a  philosopher  of  his  times  about  "  Self -development " 
and  "Reciprocity,"  as  in  the  Maxim  in  Analects,  Book  IV., 
Chapter XXIII.,  "What  you  do  not  want  done  to  yourself 
do  not  do  to  others,"  nevertheless  emphasizing  in  a  way 
to  suggest  at  least  primary  importance,  obedience  to  parents, 
and  reverence  for  ancestors.  The  Greek  Pythagoras,  too, 
(about  570  b.  c.)  is  chiefly  remembered  because  of  his 
insisting  upon  the  importance  of  harmony  that  should  exist 
between  oneself  and  the  conditions,  including  both  persons 
and  things,  that  he  finds  surrounding  him. 

The  conception  of  morality  as  derived  from  our  relations 
to  others,  especially  to  others  having  more  or  less  authority 
over  us,  lies  at  the  basis  of  what  is  termed  institutionism. 
This  finds  the  source  of  morality  in  the  customs  of  the 
society  or  the  laws  of  the  government  with  which  one  is  con- 
nected.    Both  in  China  and  Greece,  however,  there  was 


62  E  THICS  AND  NAT  URAL  LA  W 

first  developed  an  exceedingly  provincial  and  mild  form  of 
institutionism.  It  was  almost  entirely  limited  to  the  in- 
fluence of  families  and  small  neighborhoods.  Even  to-day 
in  China  there  is  very  little  of  what  could  be  termed  na- 
tional feeling;  and  an  ancient  Greek  was  much  more  loyal 
to  Athens  or  Sparta  than  to  Greece  as  a  whole.  This 
limiting  of  the  effects  of  institutionism  appears  to  have 
had  much  to  do  with  the  extraordinary  results  that  civili- 
zation attained  among  the  inhabitants  of  both  countries  as 
well  as  of  Rome  in  her  earlier  period.  Their  institutionism 
was  not  such  as  to  suppress  with  the  united  opinion  and 
force  of  overwhelming  numbers  of  people  the  exercise  of 
individual  initiative.  Wherever  this  has  been  done  to 
such  an  extent  that  the  individual  has  been  discouraged 
from  giving  expression  to  the  results  of  his  own  thinking 
and  feeling,  there  has  been  lacking  one  of  the  most  indis- 
pensable agencies  needed  in  order  to  maintain  personal  and 
private  purity  and  integrity,  as  well  as  to  correct  public 
abuses,  introduce  civic  reforms,  and  insure  general  welfare. 
Very  naturally,  certain  persons  have  always  recognized 
these  facts  and  directed  attention  to  them.  As  applied  to 
morals  they  did  so  at  an  early  period  both  among  the 
Greeks  and  Romans  by  introducing  the  word  conscience 
— a  word  that,  apparently  has  always  been  intended  to 
attribute  a  sense  of  obligation,  in  part  at  least,  to  a  man's 
individual  consciousness. 

For  many  years,  the  word  was  employed  with  the  same 
lack  of  endeavor  to  define  it  philosophically  that  we  find  in 
the  talk  and  literature  of  our  own  country.  The  Greek 
term  used  for  the  conception,  auvefSiqffts,  was  compounded 
from  cuv  meaning  with  and  eloov  a  derivative  from  a  word 
meaning  to  perceive;  and  its  popular  use  is  indicated  in  such 
a  passage  as  that  in  Romans  2:15,  "Those  having  not  the 
law  are  a  law  unto  themselves,  which  show  the  work  of  the 
law  written  in  their  hearts,  their  conscience  also  bearing 
witness  and  their  thoughts  the  meanwhile  accusing  or  else 
excusing  one  another."  The  Latin  word  was  conscientia 
from  con  meaning  with  and  scire  meaning  to  know. 

In  both  languages,  therefore,  and,  according  to  its  etymol- 
ogy in  our  own  language,  the  word  means  to  perceive  with 
or  to  know  with.  Some  scholars  add  the  word  others  as  if  it 
meant  to  know  with  others,  or  as  a  matter  of  common 
knowledge, — very  much  the  same  idea  that  we  ourselves  now 


CONSCIENCE  63 

express  by  our  word  consciousness.  Sir  William  Hamilton, 
( 1 788-1 844),  however,  in  the  eleventh  of  his  Lectures  on 
Metaphysics,  directs  attention  to  the  fact  that  this  was  only 
a  later  meaning  of  the  Greek  word,  and  that  quite  early 
among  the  Romans,  as  with  the  French  of  our  own  day,  it 
meant  both  conscience  and  consciousness. 

Seneca  (3  b.  c-65  A.  d.)  for  instance  in  Chapter  V.  of  his 
Anger  translated  by  Sir  Roger  L'Estrange,  says  that  "the 
greatest  punishment  of  an  injury  is  the  conscience  of  having 
done  it."  We  might  suppose  that  the  word  here  meant 
merely  consciousness  were  it  not  for  the  clause  immediately 
following,  "and  no  one  suffers  more  than  he  that  is  turned 
over  to  the  pain  of  repentance' ' ;  and  shortly  after  he  speaks 
of  doing  something  "not  in  any  transport  of  passion,  but  in 
honor  and  conscience." 

This  popular  use  of  the  term  has  continued  to  the  present 
time,  though  philosophers  have  differed  widely  when  they 
have  tried  to  explain  its  meaning.  A  few  associate  it  en- 
tirely with  such  conceptions  of  what  is  obligatory  as  can  be 
derived  from  experience  of  that  which  is  demanded  by  the 
state  or  society  of  which  one  finds  himself  a  member,  3,  4, 
but  the  vast  majority  associate  it  with  such  knowledge  of 
what  is  obligatory  as  is  derived  from  a  man's  own  conscious- 
ness. 5-15.     Some  assign  the  word  indifferently  to  any  or  to 

3  Conscience  ascribed  to  conceptions  and  habits  acquired  as  the  result 
of  the  influence  upon  experience  of  institutions:  "Conscience  is  an 
ideal  resemblance  to  public  authority  growing  up  in  the  individual  mind, 
and  working  to  the  same  end." — Chapter  XV., Emotions  and  Will, Pro- 
fessor Alexander  Bain  (1 810-1877)  of  Aberdeen  University.  "The  fre- 
quent practice  of  abstaining  from  punishable  acts  generates  the  most 
important  of  all  our  active  states,  the  aversion  to  whatever  is  forbidden 
in  this  form.  Such  aversion  is  conscience  in  its  most  general  type." — 
Book  IV.,  Chapter  X.,  Mental  Science,  Idem. 

4  Conscience  ascribed  to  conceptions  and  habits  acquired  as  the  result 
of  the  influence  upon  experience  of  one's  relations  to  society:  "It  is 
from  the  fundamental  unity  of  life,  and  the  normal  relations  of  men  in 
society  that  our  duties  flow." — The  Ethics  of  Evolution,  Chapter  II., 
Professor  J.  T.  Bixby  (1843-  )  of  Meadville  Theological  Seminary 
"The  moral  law  is  based  on  the  promptings  of  the  social  impulse,  the 
requirements  of  the  associative  life." — Section  7,  Chapter  XXVIII., 
Function,  Feeling,  and  Conduct,  Dr.  Frederick  Meakin.  "The  higher 
virtues  are  founded  on  the  social  instincts,  and  relate  to  the  welfare  of 
others." — Descent  of  Man,  IV.,  Chas.  Darwin  (1809-1882*) 

s  Conscience  ascribed  to  the  combined  result  of  all  the  mental  or 
psychical  faculties  when  acting  with  reference  to  a  moral  end:  "That 
principle  by  which  we  survey  and  either  approve  or  disapprove  our 


64  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

all  processes  of  the  mind  that  have  to  do  with  determining 
right  or  wrong5;  some  to  processes  of  thinking  only  6,  7; 
some  to  processes  of  feeling  only  8,  I0,  ";  and  some  to  pro- 
cesses of  both  thinking  and  feeling  9,  I2,  I3.  Some  limit  its 
effect  to  action13  and  some  trace  its  origin  in  all  cases  to  the 
direct  influence  of  divinity.14  Few  hold  to  a  theory  that 
is  absolutely  inconsistent  with  that  presented  in  this  vol- 
ume.15    But    not   many   of   them   positively   suggest    it. 


heart,  temper,  and  actions.  You  cannot  form  a  notion  of  this  faculty 
conscience  without  taking  in  judgment,  direction,  superintendence. — 
Sermons  on  Human  Nature,  II. — Bishop  Joseph  Butler  (1692-1752). 
"The  whole  moral  consciousness  of  man  in  view  of  his  own  action  and 
as  related  to  moral  law." — Law  of  Love  and  Love  as  a  Law,  Part  I., 
Division  VIII. — President  Mark  Hopkins  (1 802-1 887),  Williams  College. 
"  The  single  act  of  conscience  may  be  a  feeling,  an  emotion,  an  impulse,  or 
a  judgment,  and  as  for  conscience  in  the  sense  of  a  faculty  distinct  from 
the  particular  acts  of  the  human  mind,  there  is  no  such  thing.  The 
concept  in  its  broad  sense  is  merely  a  generalization  from  all  these  par- 
ticular facts. " — Principles  of  Morality,  Part  I.,  Professor  Wm.  M.  Wundt 
(1832-  )  of  Leipsic  University;  translated  by  M.  P.  Washburn.  "Con- 
science is  a  name  for  the  consciousness  of  moral  distinctions  and  of 
the  obligation  to  respect  them." — Elements  of  Ethics,  Chapter  VI., 
Professor  J.  H.  Hyslop  (1854-  )  Columbia  University.  "Not  only 
the  end  sought,  but  the  manner  of  seeking  it,  affects  the  nature  of  Moral- 
ity."— Idem,  Chapter  VIII.  "The  moral  judgments  taken  together  are 
referred  to  a  power  called  conscience." — Psychology,  Page  344,  Professor 
John  Dewey  (1859-  ),  Columbia  University.  "Conscience  is  in- 
telligence dealing  with  a  subject-matter." — Outline  of  a  Critical  Theory 
of  Ethics,  Part  III.,  Chapter  I.,  Idem. 

6  Conscience  ascribed  to  reason  considered  mainly  as  a  reasoning 
faculty:  "Conscience,  I  therefore  define  to  be  the  opinion  of  evidence." 
— Human  Nature,  Chapter  V.,  Section  8,  Thomas  Hobbes  (1588-1679). 
"Nothing  else  but  our  own  opinion  or  judgment  of  the  moral  rectitude 
or  depravity  of  our  own  actions." — Essay  on  the  Understanding,  Book  I., 
Chapter  III.,  Section  8;  John  Locke  (1632- 1704).  "Conscience  is 
reason  discovering  universal  truth,  having  the  authority  of  sovereign 
moral  law  and  affording  the  basis  for  personal  obligations.  Conscience 
is  thus  seen  to  be  a  cognition  or  intellectual  power,  not  a  form  of  feeling, 
nor  a  combination  of  feelings." — Handbook  of  Moral  Philosophy,  Chap- 
ter IV.;  Professor  Henry  Calderwood  (1830-1897)  Edinburgh  University. 
"Every  man  is  consciously  bound  to  do  that  and  that  only  which  the  ra- 
tional spirit  that  has  been  given  him  sees  in  its  own  rationality  to  be  due 
to  reason." — A  System  of  Moral  Science,  Introduction  Chapter  III.; 
Pres.  L.  P.  Hickok  (1798-1887),  Union  College.  "Conscience  is  pure 
reason  discovering  moral  law." — Elements  of  Ethics,  Prolegomena  I.; 
Professor  N.  K.  Davis  (1830-1910),  University  of  Virginia. 

7  Conscience  ascribed  to  the  intuitive  action  of  the  reasoning  faculties, 
— the  theory  usually  termed  that  of  rational  intuition:  "Conscience  is 
original,  and  no  additamentum  to  our  person.  .    .    .     Every  man  has, 


CONSCIENCE  65 

Opinion  is  divided,  too,  as  to  how  far  it  should  designate 
merely  involuntary  and  spontaneous  processes  like  those 
of  rational7  emotional8  or  perceptional9  intuition  or  instinct10 
or  include  also  reflective  and  deductive  processes  like  those 
of  intellectual  reasoning  and  calculation6  or  of  emotional 
experience  8,  ",  and  sympathy.  The  majority  seem  to 
think  that  the  involuntary  processes  are  more  closely  con- 
nected with  the  sense  of  obligation,  and  therefore  with 


as  a  moral  being,  a  conscience  .  .  .  which  does,  in  all  circumstances  hold 
before  him  his  law  of  duty  in  order  to  absolve  or  condemn  him. " — XII., 
B,  of  the  Metaphysics  of  Ethics;  Immanuel  Kant  (1 724-1 804),  translated 
by  J.  W.  Semple.  William  Jevons,  Jr.  (1794-1873)  in  Book  I.,  Chapter  I., 
of  his  Systematic  Morality  says  that  Samuel  Clarke,  Richard  Price,  James 
Beatie,  and  Dugald  Stewart  ascribe  the  origin  of  Moral  Sentiments  to 
"the  self-evident  dictates  of  untaught  reason." 

8  Conscience  ascribed  to  the  intuitive  action  of  the  reasoning  facul- 
ties as  influenced  by  emotion, — the  theory  usually  termed  that  of  emo- 
tional intuition:  "A  natural  and  immediate  determination  to  approve 
certain  affections  and  actions  consequent  on  them,  or  a  natural  sense  of 
immediate  excellence  in  them,  not  to  be  referred  to  any  other  quality 
perceivable  by  our  sense  or  by  reasoning. " — System  of  Moral  Philosophy, 
Volume  I.,  Book  I.,  Chapter  IV.;  F.  Hutcheson  (1694-1747).  "To  have 
the  reflection  in  his  mind  of  any  unjust  action  or  behavior  which  he  knows 
to  be  naturally  odious  or  ill  deserving  is  conscience. " — Inquiry  (Part  II., 
Section  1;  Lord  Shaftesbury  (1671-1713).  "Conscience  is  a  mental  ex- 
ercise by  which  we  feel  certain  actions  to  be  right,  and  certain  wrong." 
He  speaks  also  of  "  high  consistency  of  character  .  .  .  leading  a  man 
"tp  feel  his  way  through  these  requirements,  and  to  recognize  the  su- 
preme authority  of  conscience  over  his  whole  moral  system." — The 
Philosophy  of  Moral  Feeling,  Part  III. ;  Professor  John  Abercrombie  (1780- 
1844),  Glasgow  University.  "Conscience,  a  'feeling  of  approval.'" — 
LXXII.  Lectures  on  Philosophy  of  the  Human  Mind,  Professor  Thomas 
Brown  (1778-1820),  Edinburgh  University. 

9  Conscience  ascribed  to  the  intuitive  action  of  the  reasoning  facul- 
ties as  influenced  by  perception,  as  of  circumstances  or  occasions, — the 
theory  usually  termed  that  of  perceptional  intuition:  "Conscience  is 
the  critical  perception  we  have  of  the  relative  authority  of  our  several 
principles  of  action.  .  .  .  Conscience  feels  a  difference  of  worth,  be- 
tween one  propensity  and  another." — Types  of  Ethical  Theory,  Book  I., 
Chapter  I.;  Dr.  James  Martineau  (1805- 1900).  "The  mind  discrimi- 
nates between  acts  as  right  or  wrong  in  very  much  the  same  way  as  that 
in  which  it  discriminates  between  objects  as  black  or  white,  by  immediate 
and  what  may  not  unfitly  be  termed  intuitive  perception." — Fourth 
Lecture  on  Moral  Philosophy,  Prof.  S.  P.  Peabody  (1811-1893),  Harvard 
University. 

10  Conscience  ascribed  to  instinct, — a  feeling  in  which  the  psychical 
tendency,  emerging,  as  it  were,  from  the  physical,  begins  to  "influence 
the  trend  though  not  yet  the  conscious  processes  of  thinking  or  reason- 
ing:   "  To  do  right  is  to  act  in  accordance  with  instinct  which  prompts  us 


66  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

conscience,  than  are  the  deductive  processes,  all  of  which 
appear  to  them  to  have  more  to  do  with  the  end  toward 
which  obligation  prompts  than  with  its  source.  In  the 
same  person,  however,  as  we  shall  find  presently,  the  two — 
the  end  and  the  source — are  usually  essentially  similar,  so 
far  as  concerns  their  rational  or  emotional  quality.  Ra- 
tional intuition,  for  instance,  as  applied  to  the  source  of 
obligation  is  associated  in  the  mind  of  Kant  (see  page  80) 


to  do  in  accordance  with  nature.  .  .  .  All  that  which  I  feel  to  be  good 
is  good.  All  that  which  I  feel  to  be  wrong  is  wrong.  The  best  of 
all  casuists  is  conscience." — Ethics  of  Nature  or  Custom;  Works  of 
J.  J.  Rousseau  (1712-1778),  Vol.  IV.,  page  58;  edited  by  V.  D. 
Musset-Pathay.  "The  essential  trait  in  the  moral  consciousness 
is  the  control  of  some  feeling  or  feelings  by  some  other  feeling  or 
feelings." — Data  of  Ethics,  Chapter  VII.,  Section  44;  Herbert  Spencer 
(1830-1903). 

1 1  Conscience  ascribed  to  conceptions  and  habits  acquired  as  the 
result  of  the  influence  upon  experience  of  the  feelings  of  pleasure  and 
pain:  "Nature  has  placed  mankind  under  the  guidance  of  two  sover- 
eign masters;  Pain  and  Pleasure.  It  is  for  them  to  point  out  what  we 
ought  to  do,  as  well  as  to  determine  what  we  shall  do. " — Dentology,  Vol. 
I.,  page  137;  Jeremy  Bentham  (1748-1838). 

1 2  Conscience  ascribed  to  both  reason  and  feeling :  ' '  We  consider  our 
acts  external  and  internal,  with  reference  to  a  moral  standard  of  right 
and  wrong.  We  recognize  them  as  virtuous  or  vicious.  The  faculty  or 
habit  of  doing  this  is  conscience  .  .  .  it  is  established  by  such  a  cul- 
ture of  our  reason  as  enables  us  to  frame  or  to  accept  rules  which  are  in 
agreement  with  the  supreme  law  and  by  the  agreement  of  our  moral 
sentiments  with  such  rules." — Volume  I.,  Chapter  XIV.,  Elements 
of  Morality;  Professor  William  Whewell  (1794- 1866),  Cambridge 
University.  "Conscience  denotes  all  that  intelligence  and  feeling 
of  which  a  man  is  conscious  in  an  act  of  duty." — Science  of  Duty, 
Chapter  II.;  Professor  H.  N.  Day  (1808-1890),  Yale  University. 
"Conscience  is  the  intuitive  faculty  of  moral  judgment  with  the  char- 
acteristic feeling  that  accompanies  its  exercise" — Elements  of  Ethics, 
Book  II.,  Chapter  II. ;  Professor  J.  H.  Muirhead  (1855-  ),  University 
of  Birmingham.  See  also  Book  I.,  Chapter  V.,  Sec.  5.  of  The  Theory  of 
Good  and  Evil;  Dr.  Hastings  Rashdall  (1858-         ),  Canon  of  Hereford. 

13  Conscience  ascribed  mainly  to  practical  questions  involving 
action :  ' '  The  proper  function  of  conscience  is  not  to  discern  the  differ- 
ence between  right  and  wrong  in  the  abstract,  but  to  apply  the  abstract 
law  of  right  to  concrete  cases,  and  to  discern  what  it  demands  in  the  vary- 
ing exigencies  of  daily  life." — An  Introduction  to  Ethics;  Professor  J.  C. 
Murray  (1836-1917),  McGill  University.  "Conscience  is  that  act  of 
the  mind  by  which  we  apply  to  a  particular  case  .  .  .  the  general  rules 
prescribed  by  moral  law,"  Chapter  I.,  Section  10,  Elements  of  Morals; 
Professor  Paul  Janet  (1823-1899)  of  the  Sorbonne,  translated  by  C.  R. 
Corson. 


INTUITION  AND  INSTINCT  67 

with  the  conception  of  a  reasonable  end  that  is  rationally 
chosen  for  attainment,  and  emotional  intuition  in  the  mind 
of  Shaftesbury  (see  page  91)  with  the  conception  of  an  emo- 
tional end — that  of  benevolence.  So  in  the  cases  of  all 
men,  the  source  and  end  are  so  generally  connected  in  kind 
that  in  what  is  to  be  said  hereafter  it  will  not  always  be 
thought  necessary,  even  if  it  were  feasible,  to  mention  the 
views  of  individual  writers  with  reference  to  both. 

There  is  also  a  difference  to  which  the  attention  of  the 


x4  Conscience  as  the  Voice  of  God  in  the  soul:  "Conscience  must  be 
regarded  as  a  subjective  principle  implanted  in  the  reason  of  man,  calling 
for  an  account  of  every  action  before  God." — Apotome,  Chapter  III., 
Section  13  of  Elementology  of  Ethics;  Immanuel  Kant  (1724- 1804), 
translated  by  J.  W.  Semple.  "The  secret  presentment  that  one  is  not 
really  separated  from  the  one  Will-to-Live  contains  the  secret  of  con- 
science."— The  World  as  Will  and  Idea,  Section  65 ;  Arthur  Schopenhauer 
(1788-1850).  "Conscience  is  the  representation  of  the  supreme  per- 
sonality."— The  Principles  and  Practices  of  Morality.  Division  IV., 
Chapter  III.;  Pres.  E.  G.  Robinson  (18 15-1894)  of  Brown  University. 
"Conscience  implies  a  personal  moral  governor.  ...  It  is  the  voice 
of  a  personal  law-giver." — The  Beginnings  of  Ethics,  Chapter  XI.,  Sec- 
tion 106;  President  Carroll  Cutler  (1829-1894)  of  Western  Reserve  Col- 
lege. "The  faculty  of  conscience  in  man  postulates  the  existence  of 
God  as  the  necessary  ground  of  its  moral  affirmations." — Institutes  of 
Moral  Philosophy,  Chapter  V. ;  Dr.  L.  B.  Tefft  (1833-        ). 

1  s  In  different  ways  the  authors  of  the  following  approximate  the 
conception  presented  in  this  volume,  to  the  effect  that  conscience  is 
the  consciousness  of  conflict  between  desires  of  the  body  and  of  the 
mind.  "  The  rational  will  governed  by  an  ideal  subjects  the  lower  forms 
of  will,  impulse,  and  desire  which  persist  in  man  as  natural  (physical) 
predispositions  to  constant  criticism  and  a  process  of  selection.  This 
criticism  we  term  conscience. ' ' — A  System  of  Ethics;  Introduction  to 
Book  II.,  Professor  Frederick  Paulsen  (1846-1908)  translated  by  F. 
Thilly.  "  This  feeling  of  the  ought  (conflict)  is  not  to  be  identified  with 
any  other  content  of  human  consciousness.  .  .  .  The  feeling  is 
primary,  essential,  unique;  the  judgments  as  to  what  one  ought  to  do 
are  the  results  of  environment,  education,  and  reflection." — Philosophy 
of  Conduct,  Chapter  V.;  Professor  G.  T.  Ladd  (1842-  )  Yale  Uni- 

versity.  ' '  Conscience,  that  (mental)  ideal  of  life  which  constitutes  your 
moral  personality."  "The  ideal  that  makes  me  this  rational  self,  the 
very  ideal  that  makes  and  inspires  me." — Philosophy  of  Loyalty,  Chap- 
ter IV.,  by  Professor  Josiah  Royce  (1855-19 17),  Harvard  University. 
"Conscience  is  not  a  purely  subjective  principle  possessed  by  man  in  his 
individuality,  nor  a  wholly  objective  one  that  belongs  to  the  race.  .  .  . 
Conscience  is  a  sentiment  which  arises  when  the  individual  whose  (men- 
tal) humanity  should  lead  him  to  rise  above  the  natural  (physical)  order 
somehow  turns  against  the  world  of  humanity  within  him." — The  Value 
and  Dignity  of  Human  Life,  Part  II.,  Chapter  II.,  Section  3;  Professor 
C.  G.  Shaw  (187 1-        ),  New  York  University. 


68  E THICS  A ND  NA  TURAL  LA  W 

reader  should  be  called  between  an  intuition  7,  8,  9,  and  an 
instinct.10  An  intuition,  whether  started  into  activity  by 
the  rational  or  the  emotional  nature,  is,  in  itself  considered, 
a  strictly  rational  and  thinking,  though  at  the  same  time, 
an  instantaneous  process,  like  the  recognition  that  a  whole 
is  greater  than  any  of  its  parts.  In  this  way,  Kant  thought 
that  a  mind  could  instantly  recognize,  in  certain  cases,  that 
a  right  act  is  better  than  a  wrong  act.  But  an  instinct  is 
supposed  to  guide  an  animal  or  a  man  not  through  think- 
ing but  in  the  place  of  thinking — by  producing,  as  one  might 
say,  the  effects  of  thinking  and  yet  not  revealing  the  under- 
lying process  or  even  the  fact  of  thinking  so  as  to  make  the 
agent  of  it  conscious  of  it.  The  effect  of  instinct  is  expe- 
rienced not  in  thinking  but  in  feeling.  As  J.  J.  Rousseau 
(1712-1778)  says  in  Vol.  IV.,  page  58,  of  his  Works  edited  by 
V.  D.  Musset-Pathay,  "To  do  right  is  to  act  in  accordance 
with  instinct  which  prompts  us  to  do  in  accordance  with 
nature.  ...  All  that  which  I  feel  to  be  good  is  good. 
All  that  which  I  feel  to  be  wrong  is  wrong."  It  is  such  a 
conception  of  the  effect  of  instinct  that  causes  Professor 
T.  V.  Moore  (1877-  )  of  the  American  Catholic  University 
to  say  in  his  Historical  Introduction  to  Ethics  that  the  ethics 
of  the  Greek  Stoics  was  the  ethics  of  instinct. 

What  is  meant  in  this  statement  will  be  better  understood 
when  it  is  recalled  that  the  ancients  made  no  sharp  distinc- 
tion between  instinct  and  intuition ;  and  that  this  fact  com- 
bined with  their  pantheistic  conception  of  nature  led  them 
to  assign  to  the  prompting  of  either  of  the  two,  as  well  as  to 
the  rational  results  of  this  prompting,  the  authority  of 
divinity.  Cicero  (106-43  B.  c),  for  instance,  referring  in 
Book  I.  of  the  Tusculum  Disputations  as  translated  by  W.  L. 
Collins,  to  the  precept  of  Apollo  as  quoted  by  Socrates  ad- 
vising every  one  to  "know  himself  "  adds  "  To  know  the  soul 
unless  it  had  been  divine  would  not  have  been  a  precept  of 
such  excellent  wisdom  as  to  be  attributed  to  a  god. "  And 
Marcus  Aurelius  (120-180  A.  D.)  in  Book  IV.,  of  his  Medita- 
tions as  translated  by  Jeremy  Collier,  speaks  of  a  man  of 
probity  "keeping  pure  the  divinity  within  him  and  obeying 
it  as  a  god, "  and  in  Book  III.,  "There  is  nothing  more  valu- 
able than  the  divinity  implanted  within  you,  and  this  is 
master  of  appetites  .  .  .  has  detached  itself  from  the 
senses,  as  Socrates  used  to  say,  and  shows  itself  submissive 
to  the  government  of  the  gods,  and  helpful  and  benevolent 


ANCIENT  AND  MODERN  ETHICS  SIMILAR  69 

to  mankind."  These  conceptions  with  reference  to  the 
divineness  of  the  source  of  obligation,  though  not  the  pan- 
theistic phase  of  them,  were  adopted  later  by  the  early 
Christian  writers,  and  have  continued  to  our  own  day  (see 
footnote  I4);  and  in  the  form  of  the  distinctions  between 
the  spiritual  or  mental  and  the  material  or  the  bodily 
indicated  in  the  note  beginning  on  page  54  have  been  es- 
sential constituents  of  a  large  number  of  the  more  import- 
ant of  recent  ethical  theories. 

Now  let  us  turn  back  for  a  little  and  notice  the  way  in 
which  other  ethical  questions  were  treated  in  the  ancient 
theories.  Here  some  of  us  may  be  surprised,  at  first,  to 
find  indicated  still  more  plainly  than  in  the  case  of  con- 
science, that  the  conceptions  of  thinkers  preceding  the  age 
of  scientific  investigation  were  practically  the  same  as  are 
those  of  men  able  to  avail  themselves  of  its  most  recent 
results.  But,  on  second  thought,  we  shall  probably  be  re- 
minded that  this  fact  is  not  out  of  analogy  with  that  which 
happens  frequently.  It  is  not  unusual  for  scholarly  and 
logical  discussion  to  reach  the  same  conclusions  as  those  of 
a  mind  exercising  only  ordinary  observation  and  common 
sense.  There  is  an  aspect,  however,  in  which  this  fact  does 
not  disprove  but  rather  serves  to  prove  the  wisdom  of  the 
scholarly  and  logical  method.  To  be  of  practical  value „ 
truth  should  be  made  useful  to  all.  But  to  become  this, 
it  should  be  made  easy  for  all  to  recognize.  Nor  does  the 
fact  that  nature  fulfills  the  requirement  in  the  case  of  any 
one  truth,  release  the  mind  from  the  responsibility  of  ex- 
pending thought  upon  it.  A  principle  may  seem  very- 
simple  in  its  elementary  stages  and  yet  become  very  com- 
plex when  traced,  as  must  be  done  by  philosophy,  to  that 
into  which  it  develops. 

An  illustration  of  the  parallelism  of  thought  between  an- 
cient and  modern  writers  upon  ethics  is  afforded  by  an 
examination  of  the  systems  of  the  earliest  of  the  Greek 
philosophers  who  based  their  ethical  conceptions  upon 
the  testimony  of  one's  own  inward  consciousness  rather 
than  upon  what  could  be  learned  from  customs  and  institu- 
tions which  members  of  the  community  acting  collectively 
had  established. 

As  has  been  already  intimated,  these  systems  were  sug- 
gested by  the  failure  of  institutionism  to  give  full  credit  to 
the  effect  upon  morals  of  individual  initiative.     There  are 


70  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

two  sources  of  this  initiative — one  in  the  rational  nature 
and  the  other  in  the  emotional.  It  was  natural,  therefore, 
that  each  of  these  sources  should  have  had  its  advocates. 
It  would  hardly  be  expected,  however,  that  in  Greece  the 
earliest  advocates  of  each  should  have  been  so  contempora- 
neous that  history  now  assigns  the  same  date  for  the  birth 
and  death  of  both  of  them  (450-370  B.C.).  Of  the  two, 
Heracleitus  attributed  right  conduct  primarily  to  the  guid- 
ance of  reason,  and  Democritus  to  the  guidance  of  sensation 
or  feeling  which,  as  he  thought,  was  constantly  teaching 
men  what  they  should  do  or  avoid  doing  by  giving  them  ex- 
periences of  pleasure  or  pain,  a  child,  for  instance,  by  re- 
ceiving a  kiss  or  candy  when  obedient,  or  a  scratch  or  burn 
when  teasing  a  cat  or  caressing  a  red-hot  iron.  Both  theo- 
ries, as  most  of  us  know,  are  still  advocated  to-day,  sometimes 
as  strenuously  as  if  they  had  just  been  originated.  Both, 
too,  have  much  to  commend  them;  yet  both  must  be  de- 
clared unsatisfactory  when  presented  as  if  comprehensive 
of  all  the  influences  underlying  right  action.  It  is  true  that 
when  a  man's  conduct  is  controlled  by  reason,  it  is  not  con- 
trolled by  animal  appetite;  and,  in  this  regard,  is  moral. 
But  there  are  other  constituents  of  morality  which  are  re- 
sults of  the  emotional  nature.  So  with  the  theory  that  as- 
cribes morality  to  the  effects  of  experiencing  pleasure  and 
pain.  It  is  a  theory  too  limited  in  its  applications  to  explain 
all  that  needs  explaining.  Yet  it  has  been  supposed  to  meet 
the  demands  not  only  of  ethics  but  of  aesthetics.  Not  merely 
the  good  and  the  wise  but  the  beautiful  and  the  artistic  have 
each  been  supposed  to  be  determined  by  the  degree  in  which 
it  fulfills  the  requirements  of  pleasure.16  Many  recent 
books  unfolding  this  conception  have  been  warmly  welcomed 
as  valuable  contributions  to  modern  scientific  thought.  Yet 
the  very  name  now  given  to  the  theory,  namely  hedonism, 
from  the  Greek  word  i^oovtq  meaning  pleasure,  reveals  its  an- 
tiquity ;  and  a  very  little  study  of  the  motives  actuating  men 
ought  to  show  one  why  it  has  never  been  universally  accep- 

16 Wundt, Physiologische  Psychologies  4th  edition;  Ward,  art.  Psychol' 
cgy  in  Encyclopedia  Britannica,  9th  edition;  Lctze,  Outlines  of  /Esthetics; 
Marshall,  arts,  on  "The  Field  of  ^Esthetics  Psychologically  Considered" 
in  Mind,  1892 ;  Baldwin,  Handbook  of  Psychology,  Volume  II.,  chapters  on 
"Pleasure  and  Pain"  and  "Emotions  of  Relation."  This  author,  how- 
ever, in  his  fuller  treatises,  Social  and  Ethical  Interpretations  and  Genetic 
Logic,  Vol.  III.,  Interest  and  Art,  subordinates  the  hedonic  to  the  ideal. 


MORALITY  ATTRIBUTED  TO  FEELING  7* 

ted.  Many  people  cannot  avoid  the  conviction  that,  from 
its  very  beginning,  morality  is  due,  to  some  extent  at 
least,  to  that  which  originates  in  the  individual  reason,  or, 
in  other  words,  in  the  mental  nature.  Pleasure  and  pain 
in  the  sense,  too,  in  which  they  are  used  in  the  hedonic 
theory,  are  bodily.  How  can  they  alone,  unless  some  influ- 
ence from  the  mental  nature  cooperate  at  least  with  them, 
enable  the  latter  to  hold  the  bodily  in  subordination  ?  Yet 
this  is  the  condition,  as  large  numbers  believe,  necessary  to 
morality.  When  we  get  to  the  foundation  of  hedonism, 
we  find  its  deficiency  based,  as  is  the  case  with  many  other 
theories,  upon  a  supposed  but  not  proved  organic  connec- 
tion between  the  bodily  and  the  mental.  It  is  true  that 
what  brings  pleasure  will  cause  beauty  so  far  as  by  beauty 
is  meant  that  which  harmonizes  with  the  requirements  of 
the  bodily  organs  affected  by  melody,  as  in  hearing,  or  by 
outline  and  color,  as  in  seeing;  and  will  cause  right  so  far  as 
by  right  is  meant  that  which  will  secure  the  comfort  and 
safety  of  the  physical  body.  But  beauty  involves  more 
than  this,  and  so  does  right.  Beauty  must  embody  an 
ideal;  and,  although  this  may  harmonize,  and,  in  the  highest 
art,  must  harmonize  with  the  highest  pleasure,  it  is  not  it- 
self a  direct  result  of  aiming  for  pleasure,  and  for  this  alone. 
No  one  could  realize  his  highest  aesthetic  ideal  while  seeking 
merely  for  his  own  or  another's  pleasure  and  for  nothing  else. 
So  with  the  right.  It  must  conform  to  obligation;  and  al- 
though the  performance  of  this  may  and  must  harmonize 
with  the  highest  pleasure,  it  is  not  itself  the  direct  result  of 
seeking  for  pleasure.  No  one  would  look  merely  in  the 
direction  of  this,  in  order  to  find  the  pathway  of  duty. 
One  often  finds  the  latter  in  self-denial  and  self-sacrifice; 
in  the  most  repulsive  form  of  work  and  the  most  terrifying 
form  of  war.  Even  when  this  is  not  the  case,  even  when 
what  he  does  brings  him  pleasure,  this  fact  affords  no  proof 
that  pleasure  is  that  for  which  he  was  aiming.  Pleasure  is 
a  subjective  result,  a  result  experienced  only  within  oneself; 
and  we  never  can,  nor  do  aim  for  a  subjective  result  directly. 
We  aim  for  it  indirectly  through  some  objective  or  external 
instrumentality  which  we  suppose  or  hope  that  the  sub- 
jective result  will  necessarily  accompany.  We  may  aim, 
for  instance,  for  wealth,  influence,  or  fame,  because  we 
suppose  that  it  will  be  accompanied  by  pleasure.  But  if  we 
do  so,  we  shall  soon  find  that  the  thing  for  which  we  are 


72  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

aiming  directly  is  that  which  is  really  absorbing  our  interest ; 
that  it  is  this  for  which  we  are  really  working,  and  frequently 
would  continue  to  work,  even  though  we  knew  that  to  ob- 
tain it  would  cause  us  more  pain  than  pleasure. 

Considerations,  more  or  less  like  these,  could  not  fail  to 
appeal  to  some  of  the  philosophers  who  followed  Heracleitus 
or  Democritus.  They  usually  discussed  the  theories  of 
both,  siding  with  one  or  the  other,  and  endeavoring,  if  pos- 
sible, to  find  a  more  fundamental  principle  inclusive  of  the 
truth  in  each.  For  instance  Plato  (430-350  B.C.)  makes 
Socrates  (468-399  B.C.)  whose  teaching  he  represented,  say, 
in  Sec.  141  of  the  Philebus,  "that  the  good  and  pleasant 
partake  of  a  different  nature,  and  that  intellect  (i.  e.,  the 
mental)  partakes  of  a  share  of  good  more  than  pleasure 
does."  On  the  other  hand,  Aristotle  (384-332  B.C.)  in 
Chapter  X.  of  his  Ethics  says  that,  "pleasure  is  not  per  se, 
an  evil,  because  the  grounds  on  which  it  may  be  considered 
to  be  so,  belong  to  those  only  of  a  grosser  corporeal  (or 
bodily)  kind  and  not  to  the  purer  enjoyments  of  the  ruling 
part  of  man's  nature,  the  intellect"  (*.  e.,  the  mental). 
So,  Plato  could  argue  that  the  source  of  virtue  is  in  thoughts 
or  ideas,  whether  exercised  intuitively  or  reflectively;  and 
Aristotle  could  argue  that  the  source  is  in  feelings  as  of 
pleasure  or  of  pain,  whether  experienced  in  sensation  or  in 
psychologic  activities  occasioned  by  them. 

The  chief  contribution  to  Ethics,  however,  on  the  part 
of  these  three  greatest  of  the  Greek  philosophers  was  the 
test  which  they  began  to  apply,  and  which  in  no  age  since 
their  time  has  ceased  to  be  applied  by  some,  in  order  to  de- 
termine the  right  or  wrong  of  an  action.  In  Book  III.,  8, 
of  Xenophon's  Memorabilia,  as  translated  by  J.  S.  Watson, 
we  find  Socrates  declaring  that  "a  thing  is  good  or  beauti- 
ful when  it  fulfills  its  purpose  or  function."  This  concep- 
tion is  repeated  frequently  in  the  writings  of  all  three  of 
these  men,  for  which  reason  they  are  sometimes  classed  as 
the  functional  philosophers.  In  connection  with  this  they 
may  be  said  to  have  introduced  into  ethics  the  principle 
that  underlies  the  modern  teleological  and  utilitarian  meth- 
ods (see  page  97), — the  methods  of  determining  the  moral- 
ity of  an  action  by  the  right  or  useful  end  for  which  it  is 
aimed.  These  are  important  methods,  very  often  the  only 
rational  ones  that  could  be  chosen  through  which  to  fulfill 
a  sense  of  obligation.     But  it  is  well  to  bear  in  mind  that 


GREEK  SCHOOLS  OF  ETHICS  73 

they  cannot,  of  themselves,  create  this  sense.  The  Greeks, 
as  we  have  noticed,  recognized  this  fact  in  the  use  of  the 
term  conscience.  So  do  the  ordinary  people  of  our  own 
times.  But  some  of  our  philosophers  apparently  do  not, 
because  unable  to  explain  what  conscience  is  when  acting 
as  it  does.  They  seem,  unconsciously  to  themselves,  to 
desire  to  attribute  it  to  some  other  department  of  the  mind 
the  operations  of  which  they  can  explain.  At  any  rate,  for 
some  reason,  they  have  discussed  much  more  fully  the  end 
of  obligation  than  its  source;  and  very  seldom  recognize 
how  closely  the  two  are  connected. 

With  reference  to  the  general  character  of  the  end  that 
should  be  sought  when  fulfilling  the  requirements  of  moral- 
ity Aristotle,  through  sharing  in  the  functional  conception 
of  Socrates  and  Plato,  differed  from  them.  The  reason  for 
this  difference  is  indicated  in  the  passage  from  his  Ethics 
just  quoted.  Aristotle,  however,  did  not  accept  hedonism. 
In  Book  X. ,  Section  7  of  the  same  work  he  drew  a  distinction 
between  that  which  is  indicated  by  the  word  tqSovtq  and  the 
word  luoai^ovta  meaning,  as  variously  interpreted,  welfare, 
prosperity,  or  blessedness.  The  theory  of  those  agreeing 
with  this  general  conclusion  is  termed  eudaimonisni.  Some 
of  the  modern  advocates  of  this  theory  are  mentioned  on 
page  93. 

Both  before  and  after  the  time  of  Socrates,  Plato,  and 
Aristotle,  we  find  many  who  accepted  only  the  rational 
theory  previously  taught  by  Heracleitus  or  the  hedonic 
theory  taught  by  Democritus.  Among  the  followers  of  the 
former  we  find  those  of  the  Cynic  School  of  Antisthenes 
(444-371  B.C.)  and  Diogenes  (342-270  B.C.)  who,  to  exalt  the 
influence  of  the  reason  became  ascetic,  rejecting  all  forms 
of  pleasure;  and  those  of  the  Stoic  School  founded  by  Zeno 
(342-270  B.C.)  and  ably  continued  by  Chrysippus  (about 
206  B.C.)  The  adherents  of  this  school  were  enjoined  not 
to  pursue  pleasure  nor  avoid  pain,  but,  in  all  circumstances, 
to  be  rational  and  dutiful,  and  indifferent  to  personal 
consideration  in  the  way  either  of  indulgence  for  self  or 
sympathy  for  others.  Through  organizing  societies  and 
sending  lecturers  into  all  the  important  towns  and  cities  of 
Greece  and  Rome,  the  Stoics  propagated  belief  in  their  form 
of  morality  on  a  scale  comparable  to  that  of  the  missionary 
work  of  our  modern  churches. 

One  reason  for  this  we  may  surmise  when  we  are  made  to 


74  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

apprehend  the  motives  to  which  they  appealed.  "To  live 
according  to  nature,"  says  Cyrus  R.  Edmonds  in  a  note 
to  his  translation  of  the  first  of  the  Paradoxes  of  Cicero 
(106-43  B.C.),  "was  the  basis  of  their  ethical  system;  but 
by  this  it  was  not  meant  that  a  man  should  follow  his  own 
particular  nature;  he  must  make  his  life  conformable  to  the 
nature  of  the  whole  of  things ....  To  know  what  is  our 
relation  to  the  whole  of  things,  is  to  know  what  we  ought  to 
be  and  do."  As  the  Roman  Stoic  Marcus  Aurelius  (121- 
180  a.d.),  in  Book  III.  of  his  Meditations,  as  translated  by 
Jeremy  Collier,  says,  "Let  your  soul  work  in  harmony  with 
the  universal  intelligence,  as  your  breath  does  with  the  air," 
and  again  in  Book  X.,  "Rational  nature  admits  of  nothing 
but  what  is  serviceable  to  the  rest  of  mankind."  Notice 
how  similar  this  is  to  the  ground  taken  by  T.  H.  Green  in 
his  Prolegomena  of  Ethics,  as  quoted  on  page  99. 

Emphasizing,  on  the  other  hand,  the  influence  of  what 
can  be  learned  of  right  conduct  from  pleasure  and  pain, 
contemporaneous  with  Democritus,  were  (450-400  B.C.),  the 
Sophists,  Protagoras,  and  Gorgias;  then,  the  Cyrenaic  School 
of  Aristippus  (455-356  B.C.);  and,  later,  the  School  of 
Epicurus  (341-270  B.C.).  All  of  these  ascribed  the  good  to 
that  which  brings  personal  pleasure  rather  than  pain,  not 
necessarily  through  gratifying  the  appetites  but  through 
conduct  which,  all  things  considered,  can  bring  one  the 
greatest  happiness.  There  was  truth  in  this  theory  that 
needed  to  be  emphasized;  but  the  overemphasis  given  to  it 
led  at  times  to  false  views  and  unsatisfactory  results. 

The  Stoic  philosophy,  making  much  as  it  did  of  absti- 
nence, rationality,  and  obedience  to  duty,  seems  to  have 
been  particularly  fitted  to  be  accepted  by  the  Roman  mind. 
It  was  taught  by  Cicero  (106-43  B.C.),  but  its  most  strenu- 
ous advocates  were  Seneca  (3  B.c-65  a.d.),  Epictetus  (about 
45-103  a.d.),  and  Marcus  Aurelius  (120-180  A. D.).  Very 
naturally,  perhaps,  too,  in  reaction  against  Stoicism,  large 
numbers  of  the  Romans  also  turned  to  Epicureanism,  and 
to  this  in  its  very  worst  form,  a  form  suggested  by  the 
atomistic  theory  of  the  world's  origin  propounded  by  De- 
mocritus. This,  especially  as  elaborated  by  the  Latin  poet 
Lucretius  (94-55  B.C.)  in  his  very  widely  read  poem  De 
Rerum  Natura,  seemed  to  dispose  effectually  of  any  necessity 
for  gods  or  their  superintendence  over  human  affairs,  and 
to  allow  men  to  live  without  fear  according  to  the  precept, 


EARLY  CHRISTIAN  ETHICS  75 

"  Let  us  eat  and  drink,  for  to-morrow  we  die, "  (i  Cor.  15 :32). 
Several  years  later  Plutarch  (about  48-120  A.D.),  Plotinus 
(205-270  A.D.),  and  Porphyry  (about  233-306),  none  of 
whom  were  Christians,  developed  in  succession  different 
stages  of  what  seems  to  have  been  a  combination  of  the 
emphasis  given  to  rational  influence  by  the  Stoics  and  to 
emotional  influence  given  by  the  Epicureans.  Plutarch 
directed  attention  to  the  struggles  experienced  in  the  soul 
between  good  and  evil ;  Plotinus,  in  his  neo-Platonism,  added 
to  the  ideal  conceived  by  Plato  the  conception  of  transcend- 
ing all  thoughts  through  emotion  and  indulging  in  what 
he  termed  divine  ecstasy;  and  Porphyry  added  to  this  con- 
ception the  ascetic  theory  that  to  attain  the  desired  end  all 
the  bodily  appetites  should  be  suppressed. 

The  earliest  ethical  theories  of  Christianity,  as  indicated 
in  the  writings  of  Augustine  (354-430)  and  Ambrose  (about 
340-397) ,  seem  to  have  included  conceptions  derived  from  a 
consideration  both  of  reason  and  of  emotion,  at  the  same 
time  ascribing,  at  least,  co-ordinate  authority  to  the  state- 
ments of  the  Scriptures  and  the  requirements  of  the  Church. 
After  a  time,  these  latter  came  to  be  more  strongly  em- 
phasized. The  theory  of  institutionism  which  in  Greece  and 
Rome  when  these  were  republics  had  exerted  little  influence 
came  to  be  almost  universally  accepted,  and  for  a  thousand 
years  the  moral  principles  of  the  majority  of  the  people  of 
Europe  came  to  be  those  that  were  traceable  to  what  may  be 
termed  ecclesiastical  institutionism.  Anselm  (1 033-1 109) 
emphasized  the  same ;  but  also  the  effects  on  the  individual 
of  divine  grace ;  Abelard  (1 079-1 142)  maintained  the  need  of 
good  intention  and  disinterestedness ;  and  Thomas  Aquinas 
(1225-1274)  the  importance  of  seeking  an  end  insuring 
happiness  or  blessedness  which,  following  Aristotle,  in 
Book  X.,  Chapter  VII.,  of  his  Ethics,  he  distinguished  from 
pleasure,  dwelling  too  upon  the  dignity  of  human  nature 
and  the  rational  order  in  the  universe ;  while  Duns  Scotus 
( 1 266-1 308)  associated  right  conduct  with  reasonableness 
which,  in  a  free  being,  would  conform,  as  he  said,  to  the 
will  of  a  reasonable  God.  According  to  W.  E.  H.  Lecky 
( 1 838-1 903)  in  Chapter  I.,  page  17,  of  his  History  of 
European  Morals,  Duns  Scotus  and  William  Occam,  his 
immediate  successor,  held  that  we  have  no  innate  knowl- 
edge of  right  and  wrong,  but  that  God  reveals  it  to  us  in 
the  Scriptures. 


76  E THICS  A ND  NA  TURAL  LA  W 

Added  to  the  institutionists  who  emphasized  a  rational 
end  in  morality,  there  were  always  living  those  inclined  to 
mysticism.  This  was  primarily  emotional,  and  often  also 
ascetic.  It  seems  to  have  been  introduced  into  Christianity 
by  Johannes  Scotus  Erigena  (about  810-877)  through  the 
influence  of  the  Neo-Platonism  of  Porphyry,  and  was  sub- 
sequently developed  by  Hugo  of  St.  Victor  (1077-1141), 
Bernard  of  Clairvaux  (1091-1153),  Bonaventura  (1221- 
1274),  Eckhart  (about  i26o-i327),andTauler  (1301-1361). 
These  mystics  all  believed  in  a  state  of  ecstasy  where  one 
could,  spiritually,  commune  with  God.  Unfortunately  many 
thought  this  the  only  requirement  of  morality;  in  looking 
inward  and  upward,  they  sometimes  forgot  to  look  outward 
and  downward,  their  fellow  creatures  about  and  below 
them  receiving  little  or  no  attention.  Their  morality,  un- 
consciously to  themselves,  expressed  itself  in  gratifying  per- 
sonal exhilaration.  This,  however,  was  not  true  of  all  of  them. 
Many  were  illogical  enough  to  live  for  other  ends  than  the 
only  one  that  they  emphasized;  and  all  of  them,  by  giving 
consideration  to  emotion,  even  though,  at  times,  too  exclu- 
sively, prepared  the  world,  when  the  occasion  came,  to  recog- 
nize the  claims  of  sympathy  and  humanity  as  could  not 
have  been  the  case  had  not  these  mystics  accustomed  large 
numbers  to  discredit  theories  and  dogmas  originated 
exclusively  for  and  in  the  intellect. 


CHAPTER  VI 

MODERN    ETHICAL    THEORIES!     INSTITUTIONISM,    EMPIRICISM, 
AND  RATIONAL,  EMOTIVE,  AND  PERCEPTIVE  INTUITIONISM 

Lord  Bacon's  Inductive  Philosophy — Institutionism  of  Hobbes — 
Empiricism  of  Locke  and  his  Followers — Rational  and  Innate 
Recognition  of  Right  and  Wrong — Critical  Philosophy  of  Kant — 
His  Distinction  between  the  Noumenal  and  the  Phenomenal — 
Distinction  between  Kant's  Intuitive  Theory  and  the  Innate 
Theory  of  the  English  Rational  School — Connection  between  the 
View  of  Kant  and  that  of  Leibnitz  and  Schopenhauer — Interchange 
of  Effects  between  Mind  and  Matter — Practical  Recognition  of  this 
Fact  by  People  who  are  not  Philosophers,  and  its  Results — Con- 
nection between  the  Theories  of  Kant  and  the  Idealism  of  Hegel — 
Connection  between  Kant's  Theories  and  the  Demands  of  Practical 
Morality — Connection  between  Hegel's  Idealism  and  the  Expres- 
sion of  the  Ideal  of  Individuals — Outward  Government  Control  Sub- 
stituted by  Hegel  for  Inward  Self-control — Nietzsche's  Emphasis 
upon  Forceful  Control,  and  its  Effects  upon  Public  Morals — Insti- 
tutionism Cannot  Meet  all  the  Requirements  of  Morality — Partial 
Acceptance  by  Modern  Writers  of  Institutional  Principles — In- 
fluence of  Kant  upon  Later  Rational  Intuitionism — The  Voice  of 
God  in  Man — Moral-sense  or  Emotional  Intuitionism  of  Shaftes- 
bury— Perceptional  Intuitionism  of  Butler — Influence  on  Modern 
Thought  of  Shaftesbury  and  Butler. 

MANY  of  the  tenets  of  mysticism  were  traceable  to 
imagination  or  sentiment  rather  than  to  any  well 
reasoned  out  or  even  intelligent  motive.  A  re- 
action against  them  was  sure  to  come.  It  appeared  at  the 
opening  of  the  period  that  we  may  assign  to  the  modern 
writers  upon  ethics ;  and  the  first  noteworthy  name  that  we 
find  here  is  that  of  Lord  Francis  Bacon  (i 561-1626),  autnor 
of  the  Novum  Organum.  He  is  credited  with  being  the 
earliest  to  insist  upon  the  necessity,  in  all  successful  philo- 
sophic work,  of  what  is  termed  the  inductive  method, — a 
method  in  accordance  with  which  the  mind  refuses  to  accept 
information  or  conclusions  with  reference  to  facts  or  con- 


78  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

ditions  until  after  a  thorough  examination  by  oneself  has 
confirmed  their  credibility.  Ethics  was  a  subject  that,  for 
centuries,  Christian  writers  had  treated  as  a  department  of 
religion;  and  religion  they  had  based  not  upon  induction  but 
upon  revelation.  Bacon,  however,  did  not  hesitate  to  apply 
his  theory  even  to  this  subject.  His  chief  propositions  with 
reference  to  it  were  that  what  is  good  is  to  be  judged  by  its 
utility;  that  what  is  right  is  to  be  judged  by  its  being  bene- 
ficial; and  that  what  is  beneficial  for  society  is  to  be  judged 
by  what  is  beneficial  for  the  individual. 

The  fundamental  principle  underlying  Bacon's  method 
has  been  accepted  by  most  writers  upon  ethics  as,  indeed, 
upon  all  phases  of  philosophy  ever  since  his  time. 

Apparently,  an  almost  immediate  effect  was  produced 
upon  Hugo  Grotius  (i  583-1645)  of  Holland,  who,  in  his 
great  work  on  national  and  international  law,  entitled 
De  Jure  Belli  et  Paris,  revised,  with  new  applications,  the 
conception  of  the  ancient  Stoics  attributing  morality  to 
that  which  is  prompted  and  developed  by  nature.  Very 
nearly  associated  with  this  conception  is  one  attributing 
the  same  to  laws  and  customs  naturally  made  by  men  and 
applied  to  one  another;  and,  just  as  we  found  this  phase  of 
the  conception  to  be  among  the  earliest  to  appear  in  China 
and  Greece,  so  we  find  it  among  the  earliest  to  appear  in 
England.  Bacon  himself  had  emphasized  individualism. 
Nevertheless,  there  is  a  connection  between  what  can  be 
learned  from  a  rational  consideration  of  individual  experi- 
ence and  what  can  be  learned  from  that  which  men  have 
formulated  in  the  regulations  which  in  state  and  society 
they  have  made  for  the  guidance  of  their  fellows.  This 
connection  was  recognized  by  Thomas  Hobbes  (1 588-1679), 
author  of  Human  Nature,  De  Cor  pore  Politico,  and  Leviathan, 
or  the  Matter,  Form,  and  Power  of  a  Commonwealth,  Ecclesi- 
astical and  Civil.  He  traced  the  authority  of  moral  obli- 
gation to  the  enactments  not  of  ecclesiastical  law  as  did 
the  medieval  church,  but  of  civil  law.  He  did  so  on  the 
ground  that  this  law  is  devised  to  promote — and  he  seemed 
to  suggest  that  it  need  not  be  followed  unless  it  does  pro- 
mote— one's  own  personal  welfare. 

The  theory  in  accordance  with  which  the  mind  is  sup- 
posed to  derive  its  conceptions,  or  contents,  as  one  might 
say,  from  its  experience  of  conditions  in  the  material  world 
surrounding  it — a  theory  for  these  reasons  termed,  vari- 


HOBBES  AND  LOCKE  79 

ously,  experimentalism,  materialism,  empiricism,  from  a 
Greek  word  meaning  a  result  of  experience,  and  sensational- 
ism, meaning  a  result  derived  through  the  testimony  of  the 
senses — this  theory,  which  both  Bacon  and  Hobbes  had 
accepted,  was  greatly  reinforced  shortly  after  by  the  Essay 
on  the  Human  Understanding  of  John  Locke  (163 2- 1704),  as 
well  as  by  the  works  of  his  chief  followers, — David  Hartley 
(1 705-1 757),  author  of  Observations  on  Man  and  The  Mech- 
anism of  the  Human  Mind;  and  Joseph  Priestley  ( 1 753-1 804) , 
author  of  Hartley's  Theory  of  the  Human  Mind,  Disquisitions 
Relative  to  Matter  and  Spirit,  and  the  Doctrine  of  Philosophic 
Necessity  Explained.  In  connection  with  an  acceptance  of 
the  ''moral  sense"  theory  (see  page  91)  which  these  writers 
did  not  hold,  certain  materialistic  tendencies  of  empiricism 
were  extended  by  David  Hume  (1711-1776)  in  his  Treatise 
on  Human  Nature  into  a  system  of  skepticism,  as  it  was 
termed,  causing  him  to  affirm  that  the  mind  can  not  logi- 
cally accept  upon  testimony  any  statement  with  reference 
to  an  occurrence — like  a  miracle,  for  instance — of  a  kind  of 
which  it  has  not  had  personal  experience. 

Meantime,  in  England,  just  as  in  Greece  (see  page  69) 
philosophers  arose  who  could  not  accept  the  theory  that 
the  mind  is  dependent  for  its  conceptions,  especially  those 
concerning  right  and  wrong,  upon  what  can  be  learned 
from  the  material  world  outside  itself.  These  writers  went 
to  the  opposite  extreme.  They  maintained  that,  far  from 
being  derived  from  experience,  the  apprehension  of  right 
and  wrong  is  an  innate  function  of  reason.  They  seem  to 
have  held  the  same  sort  of  belief  in  conscience,  together 
with  its  representation  of  the  authority  of  divinity,  as  had 
been  the  case  with  some  of  the  Greeks  and  with  most, 
perhaps,  of  the  early  Christians.  On  the  continent,  this 
belief  had  seldom  been  seriously  disputed.  Philosophers 
like  Descartes  (1 596-1 650)  in  his  Meditations  and  Spinosa 
(1632-1677)  in  his  Ethica  had  differed  from  others  mainly  in 
showing  a  tendency  to  confine  the  work  of  conscience  to  the 
punishing  of  those  who  had  already  transgressed.  As  will 
be  shown  on  page  1 14,  this  was  in  accordance  with  a  very 
important  truth;  but  the  subject  needed  further  analysis. 
Some  of  the  very  titles  of  the  books  written  to  confute  the 
early  English  empiricism  indicate  the  general  trend  of  the 
arguments  presented  in  them.  Ralph  Cudworth  (1638- 
I7I5)    wrote   on    The   Eternal   and    Immutable   Morality; 


80  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

Thomas  Tennyson  (1636-17 15)  on  The  Creed  of  Hobbes 
Examined;  Samuel  Clarke  (1 675-1 729)  on  The  Unchangeable 
Obligations  of  Natural  Religion;  William  Wollaston  (1660- 
1 724)  on  The  Religion  of  Nature  Delineated,  treating  the  sub- 
ject very  much  as  did  the  Stoics  (pages  68  and  74) ;  Richard 
Price  ( 1 723-1 791)  on  A  Review  of  the  Principal  Questions  of 
Morals;  and  Professor  Dugald  Stewart  (1 753-1 828),  appar- 
ently the  last  of  those  not  influenced  by  Kant,  on  The  Out- 
lines  of  Moral  Philosophy. 

Immanuel  Kant  (1 724-1 804)  began  his  philosophic  in- 
quiries by  recognizing  that  there  must  be  some  truth  in 
both  the  innate  conception  of  the  source  of  obligation  and 
the  empirical ;  and  he  believed  that  the  tendencies  to  skepti- 
cism in  the  latter  could  be  remedied  by  accepting  the  truth 
that  is  in  the  former.  In  order  to  determine  what  this  truth 
is  in  each  case  he  began,  very  rightly,  by  examining  the 
veracity  of  the  testimony  furnished  by  each.  In  doing  this, 
however,  his  interest  in  philosophic  analysis  seems  to  have 
carried  him  too  far.  Instead  of  contenting  himself  with  the 
easily  demonstrated  fact  that  both  inward  consciousness 
and  outward  experience  must  be  treated  as  if  contributing 
something  to  the  general  ethical  result,  he  attempted  to 
investigate  and  discover  the  sources  and  methods  under- 
lying the  contributions  of  each.  This  attempt  of  his  ex- 
plains the  use  of  the  term  Critique  in  the  titles  of  his  three 
principal  philosophic  works, — The  Critique  of  Pure  Reason, 
The  Critique  of  Practical  Reason,  and  The  Critique  of  Judg- 
ment. The  first  of  these  books  treats  of  the  relation  to 
mental  and  moral  philosophy  of  that  which,  in  most  regards, 
corresponds  to  what  in  this  essay  has  been  termed  the 
mental,  but  which  he  terms  noumenal  (from  the  Greek  word 
voug,  meaning  mind)  the  essentially  rational  by  which  he 
designates  that  which  pertains  to  pure  reason,  or,  as  dis- 
tinguished from  the  apparent,  the  actual,  or,  as  the  Germans 
express  it,  the  thing  in  itself.  The  second  book  treats  of 
the  relation  to  philosophy  of  that  which  corresponds  in 
general  to  what  has  here  been  termed  the  bodily,  but  which 
he  terms  the  phenomenal,  the  apparent,  and  means  by  this 
to  indicate  the  essentially  physical  or  material. 

In  the  first  of  these  volumes,  he  endeavored,  from  a 
purely  rational  viewpoint,  to  unfold,  among  other  things, 
the  ethical  truth  with  reference  to  right  and  wrong,  includ- 
ing conceptions  of  God,  of  the  soul  and  its  continued  exist- 


KANT  VS.  CAMBRIDGE  SCHOOL  8l 

ence.  According  to  him,  intuitions  of  reason  direct  all  men 
toward  the  same  decisions,  and,  therefore,  indicate  to  them, 
and  can  be  taken  by  them  to  indicate,  that  which  is  con- 
sidered right  by  all  their  fellows.  This  conception  he  ex- 
pressed in  language  which  has  had  not  a  little  influence 
toward  causing  a  very  wide  acceptance  of  his  whole  ethical 
system.  His  language  was  that  every  man  should  act  so 
that  the  "  maxim  of  his  will "  can  always  hold  good  as  "  a 
principle  of  universal  legislation."  Unfortunately,  how- 
ever, Kant  himself  introduced  an  element  of  doubt  into 
the  trustworthiness  of  this  rule  of  life  by  arguing  elsewhere 
that  all  conceptions  derived  from  the  noumenal  can  be  con- 
sidered true  only  subjectively,  as  a  matter  of  speculation 
in  the  realm  of  ideas;  that  we  can  have  no  objective  cer- 
tainty of  any  truth  not  obtained,  or  at  least  confirmed, 
phenomenally,  through  the  senses,  as  a  matter  of  obser- 
vation. It  is  through  an  application  of  these  theories  that 
he  endeavored  to  bring  into  his  philosophic  system  that 
which  should  pay  due  regard  to  the  truth  emphasized  in  the 
innate  theory  of  the  source  of  obligation,  on  the  one  hand, 
and  in  the  empirical  theory,  on  the  other. 

The  difference  between  the  conceptions  of  Kant  and 
those  of  the  English  rational  or,  as  sometimes  termed,  Cam- 
bridge school  just  mentioned  is  much  greater  than  on  first 
thought,  might  be  supposed.  The  "rational  intuitionism," 
as  it  is  called,  of  Kant,  with  its  "categorical  imperative" 
enjoining  duty — because,  apparently,  of  the  distinction 
that  he  drew  between  pure  reason  and  reason  as  influ- 
enced by  practical  considerations — assigned  morality  to  the 
motive  as  distinguished  from  the  methods  or  effects  of  action. 
The  English  rational  school  associated  what  it  considered 
the  innate  recognition  of  right  with  every  phase  of  conduct, 
just  as  closely  as  one  ordinarily  associates  instinct  with 
every  movement  of  an  animal  and  intuition  with  every  act 
of  mind.  For  instance,  President  Noah  Porter  (1811- 
1892)  of  Yale  University,  whose  general  views  might  be 
associated  with  those  of  intuitionism,  in  Chapter  VIII.  of 
his  Elements  of  Moral  Science,  declared,  in  exact  opposition 
to  Kant,  that  "moral  qualities  and  relations  are  limited  to 
the  person,  and  his  personal  vocations,  and  cannot  be 
affirmed  of  his  motives  or  reasons." 

The  conception  that  noumenal  and  phenomenal  thinking 
may  be  non-cooperative  apparently  came  to  Kant  while  con- 


82  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

sidering  the  same  general  subject  that  Leibnitz  had  endeav- 
ored to  clarify  through  his  theory  with  reference  to  "  pre- 
established  harmony"  (see  page  32).  It  is  strange  that  neither 
of  these  philosophers  should  have  recognized — what  has  been 
maintained  throughout  this  essay,  and  what  no  thorough  stu- 
dent of  aesthetics  can  fail  to  recognize — that  there  is  one  place 
in  which  that  which  pertains  to  the  noumenal,  or,  as  one 
might  say,  the  mental  or  spiritual  and  that  which  pertains 
to  the  phenomenal,  or,  as  one  might  say,  the  bodily  or 
material  can  be  brought  into  touch  with  each  other  so  as  to 
act  conjointly.  This  place  is  in  the  conscious  intelligence 
either  of  the  Creative  Source  of  all  life  which  originally 
brought  them  together,  or  of  the  created  mind  exercising  a 
derived  function  producing  an  analogous  effect.  This  is  a 
view  that  seems  to  have  suggested  itself  to  Arthur  Schopen- 
hauer (1 788-1 860)  author  of  The  World  as  Will  and  Idea. 
In  a  criticism  of  Kant's  philosophy  in  the  second  volume  of 
that  work,  as  translated  by  R.  D.  Haldane,  he  points  out 
that  "a  perception  is  a  mere  sensation,  and  only  by  an 
application  of  the  understanding  does  our  intellect  change 
this  mere  sensation  into  an  idea." 

The  truth  seems  to  be  that,  in  this  case,  we  are  dealing 
with  effects  in  which  it  is  impossible  for  consciousness  to 
separate  the  bodily,  especially  as  manifested  in  instinct, 
from  the  mental,  especially  as  manifested  in  intuition.  The 
only  indisputable  inference  to  be  drawn  from  the  effect 
upon  each  other  of  the  bodily  and  the  mental  when  acting 
together  seems  to  be  an  application  of  the  general  principle 
of  correspondence  first  clearly  brought  out  in  the  philosophy 
of  Emanuel  Swedenborg  (16S8-1772)  and  best  explained  in 
his  Divine  Love  and  Divine  Wisdom.  His  conception — to 
illustrate  it  in  a  manner  conformable  to  our  present  pur- 
pose— seems  to  have  been  that  there  is  a  correspondence 
readily  recognized  by  consciousness  between,  say,  an  exter- 
nal and  physical  movement  like  the  pointing  of  a  ringer  and 
an  internal  and  a  psychical  conception  like  that  of  particu- 
larizing or  discriminating;  or,  again,  between  a  falling 
inflection  of  voice  produced  by  the  bodily  organism  and  a 
decisive,  conclusive  mental  intention.  This  correspond- 
ence, which  is  often  perceived  and  put  into  use  by  children 
too  young  to  understand  explanations,  is  at  the  base  of  all 
language,  either  of  gesture  or  voice;  in  fact  of  every  form 
of  art,  or  of  any  kind  of  human  expression  or  communi- 


KANT'S  SEPARATION  OF  THEORY  AND  PRACTICE     83 

cation.  It  is  the  result  of  an  imaginative  or  image-making 
principle  in  accordance  with  which  innumerable  outward 
effects  presented  to  eye  or  ear  and  inward  effects  presented 
to  the  mind  are  brought  together  in  consciousness  in  such 
ways  as  to  appear  practically  identical, — the  one  contribut- 
ing the  form  or  symbol,  and  the  other  the  matter  or  sub- 
stance of  the  thought.  The  application  of  the  principle 
might,  indeed,  be  said  to  be  a  foremost  way  in  which  human 
beings  can  manifest  the  creative  trait  of  the  divine  source  of 
all  life  from  which  they  are  derived.  To  recognize  in  prac- 
tice, and  to  use  as  a  constant  habit,  this  principle  of  cor- 
respondence, is  so  natural  to  human  nature  that  it  may  be 
considered  essential  to  a  possession  of  it.  One  is  no  more 
necessitated  to  separate  in  consciousness  the  psychical  or 
internal — the  noumenal,  as  Kant  would  term  it — from  the 
physical,  the  external,  or  the  phenomenal,  than  to  separate 
soul  from  body. 

That  this  is  so  seems  not  to  have  been  recognized  by 
Kant;  but  it  is  practically  recognized  by  the  vast  majority 
of  people  who  are  not  philosophers.  They  draw  no  dis- 
tinction between  theoretical  and  practical  morality ;  between 
thinking  right  and  acting  right.  They  do  not  believe  that  a 
man  in  a  church  on  Sunday  can  be  theoretically  or  senti- 
mentally all  that  he  should  be,  and  yet,  during  the  rest  of 
the  week,  be  practically  the  business  swindler  that  he 
should  not  be.  They  believe  that  one's  inward  sentiments, 
if  they  could  be  ascertained,  would  accord  with  the  testi- 
mony of  his  outward  conduct.  Still  more,  when  they  come 
to  think  of  it,  do  they  believe  that  his  desires  must  accord 
with  this.  Conduct,  as  we  shall  notice  hereafter,  is  moral  in 
the  degree  in  which,  when  necessary,  the  mental  tendency 
in  it  has  subordinated  the  bodily  tendency.  But  desires 
are  the  source  of  conduct.  The  same  condition,  therefore, 
must  exist  among  them.  In  other  words,  it  is  among  the 
desires  that  the  contest  between  the  bodily  and  the  mental, 
in  which  the  former  is  subordinated  to  the  latter,  must  take 
place  and  be  decided.  This  is  a  general  fact  which,  without 
explaining  it  through  the  use  of  the  same  terms,  is  very  com- 
monly acknowledged.  The  religious  sect  of  the  Quakers, 
for  instance,  when  they  speak  of  being  guided  by  their 
Inward  Light  mean  being  guided  by  higher  desire;  and  by 
this,  they  frequently  mean,  too,  desire  when  prompting  them 
in  a  certain  direction  as  a  result  of  an  inward  victory  over 


84  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

lower  desire  when  striving  to  incline  them  in  another  direc- 
tion. Kant,  however,  though  he  did  not,  because  he  could 
not,  deny  this  inward  conflict,  did  not  insist  upon  the  neces- 
sity for  it;  and  in  the  emphasis  that  he  gave  to  the  distinc- 
tion between  pure  reason  and  practical  reason  he  could  not 
avoid  the  suggestion  that  it  was  a  contest  in  which  very 
frequently  higher  desire  would  not  be  especially  blame- 
worthy if  it  were  not  successful. 

Two  results,  important  for  us  to  consider,  seem  to  have 
followed  upon  the  theories  of  Kant.  G.  W.  F.  Hegel  (1770- 
1 83 1 ) ,  recognizing  the  importance  of  the  noumenal  in  the  sense 
of  the  spiritual,  emphasized  it  still  more  than  did  his  pre- 
decessor— so  much  so,  in  fact,  that  he  reduced  the  phenom- 
enal, the  apparent,  or  the  physical,  to  theoretic  nonentity, 
resolving  all  existence  into  the  development  or  materializing 
of  ideas.  Why,  he  seems  to  have  asked,  should  it  appear 
philosophical  to  adjust  the  operation  of  pure  reason  to  that 
of  practical  reason ;  why  should  we  not  suppose  that  every- 
thing ought  to  be,  in  the  last  analysis,  a  method  of  giving 
expression  to  pure  or  absolute  reason, — to  ideas?  This 
conception  led  to  the  formulation  of  the  philosophical  sys- 
tem termed  German  idealism. 

The  other  result  of  Kant's  philosophy  was  more  strictly 
ethical.  It  was  a  supposed  justifiable  separation  of  specu- 
lative from  practical  morality,  as  in  the  case,  just  mentioned, 
of  a  merchant  apparently  thinking  in  accordance  with  the 
principles  of  right  when  at  church  on  Sunday,  but  acting 
in  an  opposite  way  when  in  his  shop  during  the  other  days 
of  the  week;  or — as  illustrated  in  the  late  war — of  a  mili- 
tary officer  being  honorable,  truthful,  and  humane  when 
stationed  in  a  village  of  his  own  country,  but  exactly  the 
opposite  when  stationed  in  a  village  of  an  enemy's  country. 
To  think  that  different  circumstances,  as  in  these  instances, 
can  alter  the  morality  of  an  act  is  perfectly  logical  in  case  it 
is  held  that,  in  order  to  meet  the  emergencies  of  experience,  a 
moral  decision  can  be  changed  after  it  leaves  the  mind;  but 
it  is  illogical  in  case  it  is  recognized  that  questions  in  dispute 
between  lower  and  higher  desire  ought  to  be  settled  before 
they  leave  the  mind.  It  is  one  thing  to  determine  within 
oneself  the  right  principle  upon  which  one  shall  act,  leaving 
open  to  be  decided  subsequently  merely  the  methods  through 
which  to  apply  the  principle;  and  another  thing  to  delay 
the  choice  of  a  principle  to  a  time  when  circumstances  can 


KANT  AND  HEGEL  85 

prove  which  of  several  principles  promises  to  be  the  most 
expedient.  Kant  himself  would  have  recognized  this  differ- 
ence, but  too  many  of  those  influenced  by  his  philosophy 
failed  to  do  so.  They  believed,  or  thought  that  they  be- 
lieved, in  pure  reason,  and  the  categorical  imperative; 
but  many  of  them  drew  no  distinction  between  the  feeling 
of  instinct  and  the  judgment  of  intuition;  and  even  when 
they  did,  they  failed  to  recognize  that  nothing  in  either  can 
indicate  moral  efficiency  except  as  it  is  a  result  of  mental 
desire  that  already  within  the  mind  has  subordinated 
bodily  desire  to  its  own  expressional  purposes.  The  innere 
Siimme,  or  the  "  inward  voice, "  of  which  we  hear  so  much  in 
literature  traceable  to  German  influence  from  the  time  of 
Goethe  to  that  of  Ibsen,  is  frequently  a  conception  consist- 
ent with  a  thorough  lack  of  recognition  of  the  necessity  or 
importance  of  any  such  inward  subordination.  This  innere 
Stimme,  traceable  often  to  what  is  acknowledged  to  be 
impractical,  may  refer  to  instinctive  or  intuitive  prompt- 
ings that  are  either  high-minded  and  wise,  or  are  inexcusably 
whimful  and  passionate.17  This  fact  explains  why  so  many 
German  novels  and  plays  inculcate  lessons  directed  chiefly 
toward  inducing  people  to  quit  or  smash  whatever  is  un- 
pleasant or  distasteful,  especially  in  one's  domestic  sur- 
roundings, rather  than  first  to  attempt  that  change  in 
one's  own  spirit  which  actual  life  usually  proves  to  be  the 
most  feasible  as  well  as  the  most  modest  and  kindly.  At 
any  rate,  whatever  may  be  the  result  of  this  attempt,  it  is 
only  when  one  is  prepared  to  meet  the  conditions  of  the 
world  in  a  right  spirit  that  he  can  expect  them  to  appeal  to 
him  as  in  themselves  right. 

Now  let  us  return  to  Hegel.  As  has  been  said,  he  exalted 
the  noumenal  in  the  sense  of  the  mental,  the  spiritual,  and 
the  ideal  still  more  than  did  Kant,  resolving  all  things  into 
the  development  or  materializing  of  ideas.     The  necessary 

1 1  Notice  the  following  confirmation  of  this  statement  written  by  a 
German.  Professor  Kuno  Francke  of  Harvard  University  in  an  article 
in  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  for  October,  19 14,  said :  "  In  contradiction  to  this 
fundamental  American  trait  of  self-possession  I  designate  the  passion 
for  self -surrender  as  perhaps  the  most  significant  expression  of  national 
German  character.  .  .  .  He  loves  to  surrender  to  feelings,  to  hysterias 
of  all  sorts;  he  loves  to  merge  himself  in  vague  and  formless  imaginings, 
in  extravagant  and  reckless  experience,  in  what  he  likes  to  call  living 
himself  out.  .  .  .  No  one  is  more  prone  to  forget  his  better  self  in  this 
so-called  living  himself  out  than  the  German." 


86  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

inference  was  that  it  becomes  every  person  to  give  expres- 
sion to  his  own  ideas,  and  to  his  own  inner e  Stimme  "inner 
voice."  But  different  persons  have  different  ideas.  There 
must  be  something  to  limit  different  methods  of  expressing 
these,  or  there  will  be  no  peace  in  the  world.  The  sect  of 
Quakers,  who  were  mentioned  a  moment  ago,  and  those  like 
them,  would  say  that  this  peace  could  and  should  be  pre- 
served by  doing  everything  possible  to  cause  each  individual 
to  recognize  in  his  own  consciousness  the  presence  of  both 
bodily  and  mental  desire,  and  to  be  careful  to  make  all  out- 
ward expression  conform  to  the  dominance  of  the  latter. 
In  other  words,  these  people  would  say  that  the  true  method 
in  which  to  control  the  world  in  such  a  way  as  to  secure 
peace  among  men  is  to  train  each  one  to  exercise  self- 
control  and  to  do  this  by  keeping  the  mental,  which  is 
always  non-selfish  as  well  as  rational,  uppermost. 

But  Hegel  did  not  think  this.  He  seems  to  have  been  so 
influenced  by  Kant's  theory  as  to  conceive  that  nothing 
could  keep  the  peace  of  humanity  except  force,  exerted  from 
the  outside.  "As  for  the  ethical,"  he  says,  in  Part  III.,  Sec. 
156,  of  his  Philosophy  of  the  Right,  as  translated  by  S.  W. 
Dyde,  "there  are  only  two  possible  views.  Either  we  start 
from  the  substantial  social  system,  or  we  proceed  atomically 
and  work  up  from  a  basis  of  individuality.  This  latter 
method  is  void  .  .  .  since  mind  is  not  something  individual, 
but  the  unity  of  individual  and  universal," — a  statement 
showing  his  recognition  of  the  non-selfish  origin  of  that  which 
influences  the  mental  or  rational  nature  (see  page  20).  But 
Hegel's  method  of  using  this  recognition  caused  him  to  iden- 
tify all  moral  obligations  with  those  prescribed  in  the  family, 
society,  and  state.  The  latter,  he  says,  in  Sec.  258,  "  is  the 
march  of  God  in  the  world,  its  ground  or  cause  is  the  power 
of  reason  realizing  itself  in  will."  Man  is  to  "do  nothing 
except  what  is  presented,  expressed,  and  recognized  in  his 
established  relations."  Thus  the  same  thinker  who  in  his 
mental  philosophy  represented  an  extreme  form  of  idealism 
represented  in  his  moral  philosophy  an  equally  extreme  form 
of  materialism,  indisputably  associated  with  institutionism 
and  militarism,  in  this  way  making  more  plausible  the 
theoretic  separation  between  the  speculative  and  the  prac- 
tical that  was  suggested  by  Kant. 

After  the  time  of  Hegel,  the  most  important  of  the  Ger- 
man  contributions  to  ethics  seems  to  have  been  made 


FROM  WUNDT  TO  NIETZSCHE  87 

by  Professor  Wilhelm  Max  Wundt  (1832-  )  of  Leipsic 
Univerity.  He  was  the  first  in  that  country,  in  fact  in  any 
country,  to  attempt,  in  accordance  with  the  laboratory 
methods  of  physiological  psychology,  an  application  to  all 
philosophic  problems  of  the  theory  of  evolution.  However, 
his  insistence  upon  the  ethnic  origin  of  moral  principles, 
especially  developed  in  connection  with  the  customs  of 
society,  did  not  necessitate  any  fundamental  change  in  the 
theories  of  those  who  had  accepted  the  narrower  con- 
ceptions of  Hegel,  attributing  such  principles  to  the  in- 
fluence of  the  state.  Following  Wundt,  came  writers  of  a 
more  individualistic  tendency,  especially  Frederick  Paul- 
sen (1 846-1 908)  of  the  University  of  Berlin  and  Rudolph 
Eucken  (1846-  )  of  the  University  of  Jena.  Quotations 
from  the  System  of  Ethics  by  the  former  and  from  Ethics 
and  Modern  Thought  by  the  latter  will  be  found  in  other 
places  in  this  volume.  The  influence  of  those  writers,  how- 
ever, upon  the  popular  thought  of  their  country  seems  to 
have  been  very  slight  compared  to  that  of  Frederick 
Nietzsche  (1 844-1 900).  This  man  was  an  eccentric, 
and,  occasionally  brilliant,  essayist  who,  in  books  like 
those  termed  Will  to  Power,  Twilight,  Ecce  Homo,  and 
Dawn  of  Day,  gave  expression,  but  always  in  an  in- 
complete, unsystematic  way,  to  philosophical  conceptions. 
Apparently  he  was  an  opponent  of  Hegel;  but,  in  some 
regards,  seems  to  have  been  his  logical  successor.  In  a 
world  where  right  is  determined  by  the  state,  Nietzsche 
pointed  out  that  the  agency  needed  in  order  to  promote 
the  influence  of  right  is  force;  and,  added  to  this,  he  said 
that  those  who  embody  and  exhibit  force  thereby  make 
themselves  supermen;  also  that  their  standards  are,  and 
should  be,  different  from  those  of  other  people  who,  as 
contrasted  with  them,  are  slaves;  that  as  slaves,  it  is  well 
enough  for  them  to  practice  obedience,  humility,  gentleness, 
consideration,  humaneness,  and  other  feminine  traits;  but 
that  from  obligation  to  manifest  these,  the  superman  is 
absolved.  It  was  asserted,  too,  that  there  were  races  of 
supermen;  and  that  of  these,  the  German  race  stood  fore- 
most. To  manifest  force  by  being  dictatorial  in  family, 
school,  and  business;  by  maintaining  universal  military 
discipline  in  his  own  country ;  and  by  destroying,  in  strange 
contrast  to  the  racial  "  gemuthlichkeit"  (geniality)  in 
which  he  once  justly  prided  himself,  the  peace  of  neigh- 


88  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

boring  countries, — this  the  German  was  taught  to  con- 
sider his  du^y  and  destiny.  "To  despoil  your  neighbors," 
Nietzsche  said,  "is  to  deprive  them  of  the  means  of  injuring 
you."  "  Love  peace  as  a  means  to  new  wars,  and  the  short 
peace  better  than  the  long."  So  contrary  to  all  the  primary 
promptings  of  rational  and  humane  non-selfishness  were 
such  doctrines,  and,  as  regards  details  of  presentation,  so 
inaccurate,  preposterous,  ill-balanced,  illogical,  and  contra- 
dictory, that  sensible  people  outside  of  Germany  usually 
considered  him  insane,  and  this  not  only  during  the  last 
years  of  his  life,  when  it  was  necessary  to  keep  him  under 
surveillance,  but  during  the  whole  of  his  literary  career. 
Some  of  his  countrymen,  however,  seem  to  have  taken  him 
seriously.  The  results,  combined  with  the  influences  al- 
ready mentioned,  were  appalling.  Those  in  the  country 
not  intellectually  convinced  of  the  Tightness  of  institution- 
ism  were,  at  least,  silenced  through  the  influence  of  public 
sentiment  due  often  to  surreptitious  military  suasion ;  and 
the  whole  world  outside  of  Germany  was  led  to  think  that, 
perhaps,  her  best  contribution  to  human  progress  had  been 
the  proof  afforded  by  her  that  the  highest  developments  of 
education,  learning,  diligence,  and  efficiency,  if  not  accom- 
panied by  ethical  development  based  upon  true  principles, 
may  fail  to  exert  the  kind  of  influence  most  essential  to  the 
betterment  of  individual  character;  and  that  even  a  state 
religious  organization  may  be  so  dominated  by  false  moral 
conceptions  as  to  lessen  greatly  any  general  faith  in  the 
efficacy  of  the  methods  of  influencing  men,  which  it  was 
the  primary  object  of  the  founder  of  the  religion  to  intro- 
duce into  the  world. 

Of  course,  as  has  been  said  before,  there  is  some  truth  in 
institutionism.  Customs  and  laws  are  outward  and  formal 
expressions  of  the  inward  wishes  of  certain,  at  least,  of  those 
by  whom  one  is  surrounded;  and  to  do  that  which  these 
wish,  when  thus  expressed,  seems,  at  first  thought,  to  be  the 
same  as  to  be  influenced  by  mental  non-selfish  consider- 
ation for  one's  fellows.  But  it  is  not  the  same.  (  When  a 
man  gives  expression  to  his  wishes  through  the  agency  of 
physical  force,  and  expects  others  to  conform  to  them 
because  of  his  exertion  of  this  force,  he  is  using  a  form  of 
influence  that  is  not  mental.  The  effect  of  national  mili- 
tarism, for  instance,  is  distinctly  different  from  that  of  indi- 
vidual altruism.     This  is  the  reason  why  institutionism 


INSTITUTIONISM  89 

like  socialism,  which  also  advocates  the  exertion  over  men  of 
moral  control  through  external  force  organized  by  the 
state  to  do  this  work,  is  not  sufficient  to  meet  the  require- 
ments of  morality  (see  pages  285-291).  The  control  of  a 
man  by  others  outside  of  himself  can  never  take  the  place 
of  his  own  inward  self-control. 

Nevertheless  this  view  of  morality  as  due  to  social  or 
institutional  environment  has  been  revived  lately  in  France, 
mainly  through  the  writings  of  two  professors  in  the  Uni- 
versity of  Paris, — Emile  Durkheim  (1858-1917)  in  Element- 
ary Forms  of  the  Religions  Life,  translated  by  J.  W.  Swan; 
and  Lucian  Levy-Bruhl  (1857-  )  in  Ethics  and  Moral 
Science,  translated  by  E.  Lee.  See  footnotes  3  and  4,  page  63. 

Of  a  less  extreme  form  of  this  view  in  which  obligation 
is  attributed  in  merely  a  partial  way  to  our  relations  to  our 
fellows,  we  find  many  instances  as  in  The  Elements  of  Moral 
Science  of  President  Francis  Wayland  (1 776-1855).  For 
reasons  that  will  be  stated  in  Chapter  VII.,  there  can  be  no 
objection  to  emphasizing  this  source  of  moral  authority  ex- 
cept when  it  is  done  in  such  a  way  as  to  exclude  the  con- 
sideration due  to  other  sources  of  equal  importance. 

The  influence  of  Kant  in  the  direction  either  of  extreme 
idealism  or  of  institutionism  was,  apparently  on  his  part, 
unintentional;  but  he  was  the  source  of  other  influences 
entirely  different  which  he  did  intend.  Any  just  estimate 
of  his  work  must  give  him  credit  for  these.  His  distinction, 
for  instance,  between  the  noumenal  and  the  phenomenal, 
even  to  those  who  did  not  accept  all  his  inferences,  and 
notwithstanding  his  conception  of  rational  intuition,  had  the 
result  of  ascribing  right  conduct  more  unmistakably  than 
had  yet  been  done  to  the  action  of  the  whole  rational  nature, 
rather  than  to  mere  innate  action  that  possibly  at  least,  as 
in  instinct,  might  be  supposed  to  operate  independently  of 
reasoning;  and  his  emphasis  of  the  authority  of  the  cate- 
gorical imperative  furnished  not  only  a  phrase  but  a  formu- 
lated thought  that  has  seldom  been  absent  from  any  ethical 
controversy  since  his  time.  Among  modern  writers  who, 
without  accepting  his  philosophy  in  full,  seem  to  have  been 
greatly  influenced  by  these  two  features  of  it  may  be  men- 
tioned Prof.  Paul  Janet  (1823-1899)  of  the  Sorbonne,  author 
of  The  Elements  of  Morals.  Prof.  Henry  Calderwood 
( 1 830-1 899)  of  Edinburgh  University,  author  of  a  Hand- 
book of  Moral  Philosophy;  President  L.  P.  Hickok  (1798- 


90  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

1888)  of  Union  College,  author  of  A  System  of  Moral  Science; 
Prof.  Joseph  Haven  (18 16-1874)  of  Amherst  College, 
author  of  Moral  Philosophy;  Prof.  N.  K.  Davis  (1 830-1910) 
of  the  University  of  Virginia,  author  of  The  Elements  of 
Ethics;  Prof.  E.J.  Hamilton  (1 834-1919)  of  the  University  of 
the  State  of  Washington,  author  of  The  Moral  Law;  and 
President  John  Bascom  (1827-1911)  of  the  University  of 
Wisconsin,  author  of  Ethics. 

Another  conception  made  to  appear  philosophical  through 
the  advocacy  of  Kant  is  the  associating  of  the  promptings  of 
conscience  as  the  source  of  the  right  motives  upon  which  he 
laid  extreme  stress,  with  the  direct  influence  of  divinity 
(see  footnote  M,  on  page  67).  His  view  upon  this  subject 
was  not  unlike  that  of  Bishop  Joseph  Butler  (1692-1752) 
who,  in  the  third  of  his  sermons  on  Human  Nature,  referred 
to  conscience  as  "the  voice  of  God  in  man."  This  expres- 
sion is  true  enough,  if  those  who  hear  it  recognize  that  it  is 
used  in  a  symbolic  or  literary  sense ;  but  it  is  hardly  suscepti- 
ble of  proof  if  accepted  as  a  philosophic  proposition,  or  safe 
for  guidance  if  supposed  to  be  a  literal  statement.  If  there 
be  a  Creator,  He  must  have  created  conscience  or,  at  least, 
the  conditions  that  occasion  its  action,  and  have  intended 
by  it  to  indicate  what  a  man  should  do.  But  neither  experi- 
ence nor  argument  can  prove  that  this  indication  is  of  the 
nature  of  dictation  such  as  is  ordinarily  associated  with  that 
which  we  hear  through  what  we  term  the  "voice."  The 
effect  of  conscience  is  frequently  more  like  that  of  sugges- 
tion which  leaves  the  mind  free  to  decide  upon  its  own 
methods  of  action  according  to  the  promptings  of  its  own 
judgment.  There  is  danger  that,  if  we  tell  people  that  con- 
science is  the  voice  of  God,  some  of  them — as  has  been  proved 
in  the  case  of  millions  of  fanatics — will  begin  to  think  it  an 
infallible  monitor  which  relieves  them  of  the  necessity  of 
expending  any  further  thought  upon  a  subject;  and  any 
endeavor  whatever  to  enlighten  such  people  is  apparently 
predoomed  to  failure.  Nevertheless  many  lines  could  be 
filled  with  quotations  from  ethical  writers  who  seem  to  be 
using  this  phrase  as  if  in  it  the  word  voice  could  be  inter- 
preted literally.  It  would  be  unfair  however  to  insert  these 
quotations  in  this  place.  Many,  if  not  the  great  majority, 
of  these  authors  mean  little  more  than  is  expressed  by  the 
quaker,  Jonathan  Dymond  (1796-1828),  when,  in  addition 
to  opposing,  in  Chapter  VI.  of  his  Principles  of  Ethics,  the 


CONSCIENCE  AS  THE   VOICE  OF  GOD  9 1 

view  just  presented,  he  says  that  "the  right  is  the  will  of 
God  as  expressed  in  various  ways."  Inasmuch  as  the  dic- 
tates of  conscience  in  different  men  often  differ,  it  cannot 
safely  be  assumed  that  the  right  is  expressed  through  it, 
either  unequivocally  or  solely. 

Through  his  presentations  of  the  subject,  Kant,  as  has 
been  said,  reinforced  with  more  defmiteness  than  had  existed 
before,  the  rational  theory  with  reference  to  the  origin  of  the 
sense  of  obligation  that  had  been  held  in  England  by  such 
writers  as  Cudworth,  Clarke,  and  Wollaston  (see  page  80). 
All  these  had  traced  morality  to  the  action  of  the  inward 
mind  rather  than  to  anything  that  could  be  learned  from 
outward  experience.  But  the  action  of  the  mind  to  which 
they  referred  had  been  that  of  the  cognitive  faculties  alone. 
Long  before  the  time  of  Kant,  Arthur  Ashley  Cooper,  Lord 
Shaftesbury  (1671-1731)  had  pointed  out  that  a  man  could 
be  influenced  morally  through  his  emotions  also.  In  his 
Inquiry  Concerning  Virtue  and  Merit  and  The  Moralist  he 
showed  that,  in  connection  with  every  prompting  to  duty, 
one  is  conscious  of  a  feeling  attributable  to  a  moral  sense  or 
faculty.  In  taking  this  ground,  he  was  ably  seconded  by 
Francis  Hutcheson  (1694-1747) ;  who,  in  his  Inquiry  into  the 
Origin  of  our  Ideas  of  Beauty  and  Morality,  maintained  that, 
in  addition  to  the  five  external  senses,  we  possess  certain 
internal  senses  introducing  us  to  aesthetics  and  to  ethics  in  a 
way  similar  to  that  in  which  we  become  acquainted  with 
metaphysical  axioms.  Lord  Shaftesbury's  conception  which 
since  the  time  of  Hutcheson  has  been  termed  the  moral-sense 
theory,  and  termed  also,  to  distinguish  it  from  the  rational 
intuitionism  of  Kant,  the  emotional  intuitional  theory,  was 
subsequently  accepted,  in  general,  by  Adam  Smith  (1723- 
1790)  who,  in  his  Theory  of  Moral  Sentiments,  emphasized 
the  influence  upon  right  conduct  of  one's  having  sympathy 
with  others;  and  by  David  Hume  (1711-1776)  in  his  Treatise 
on  Human  Nature.  The  same  theory  is  usually  represented 
as  underlying  the  ethical  systems  of  continental  writers  like 
Herbart,  Rousseau,  and  Brent ano. 

Bishop  Joseph  Butler  (1692-1752),  in  his  Sermons  on 
Human  Nature,  as  well  as  in  his  famous  Analogy  of  Religion, 
broadened  this  theory,  assigning  one's  moral  guidance  less 
to  a  special  sense  than  to  a  general  mental  result  partly 
intellectual  as  well  as  emotional.  This  theory,  together 
with  that  of  other  writers  like  Martineau,  Lecky,  and  Pea- 


92  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

body,  is  usually  termed  that  of  perceptional  intuition. 
(See  footnote  5,  page  64;  also  footnote  I2,  page  66.)  To 
Butler,  conscience,  without  being  especially  analyzed, 
seemed  a  source  of  moral  approbation  and  disapprobation,  a 
great  regulative  force  governing,  restraining,  and  directing 
all  the  affections  or  passions.  His  general  conceptions 
have  had  great  influence  in  molding  opinion  in  modern 
times,  mainly,  probably,  because  of  their  tendency  to  har- 
monize practically  the  results  of  intuition,  whether  rational 
or  emotional,  with  those  of  experience,  however  derived  or 
developed.  This  fact  became  evident  in  the  writings  of 
Theodore  Jouffroy  (1 796-1 842),  the  chief  of  the  followers  of 
Victor  Cousin  (1 792-1 867),  founder  of  what  has  been  termed 
the  French  Eclectic  School  of  Philosophy,  intended  to  recon- 
cile idealism,  like  that  of  Berkeley  and  some  of  the  Germans, 
with  materialism,  like  that  of  Hobbes  and  Locke.  Jouffroy, 
in  an  introduction  to  a  French  translation  of  Dugald  Stew- 
art's (1 753-1 828)  Moral  Philosophy  pleaded  for  the  equal 
claims  of  the  facts  of  consciousness  and  of  experience,  both 
being  related,  as  he  showed  later  in  his  Lecturers  on  Moral 
Philosophy,  to  his  general  proposition — not  entirely  unlike 
that  of  the  ancient  Stoics  (see  page  74) — that  right  is  con- 
formity to  order  as  manifested  in  nature,  a  conception 
suggesting  that  of  Nicholas  Malebranche  (1638-17 15)  and 
involving  in  some  regards  the  same  general  principle  as  is 
expressed  by  Butler  in  his  Analogy  of  Religion. 

Undoubtedly  both  Shaftesbury  and  Butler  were  directed 
toward  their  ethical  theories  by  the  precepts  of  their  form  of 
religion,  and  also  by  a  perception  of  the  non-selfish  tend- 
ency of  all  mental  promptings;  and  a  similar  statement 
might  be  made  of  many  of  their  followers.  At  the  same 
time,  philosophically  considered,  it  is  proper  to  attribute  to 
the  combined  influence  of  these  two  men  the  recognition, 
among  large  numbers  of  more  recent  writers  upon  ethics, 
of  the  emotional  in  addition  to  the  rational  influences  at  the 
basis  of  morality.  For  instance,  in  the  Essays  on  the  Intel- 
lectual Faculties  and  the  Active  Powers,  by  Prof.  Thomas  Reid 
(17 10-1795),  the  Elements  of  Morality,  by  Prof.  William 
Whewell  (1 794-1 868),  and  The  Divine  and  Moral  Govern- 
ment,  by  President  James  McCosh  (1811-1894),  the  con- 
ceptions of  all  of  whom  are  allied  in  most  other  regards  to 
those  of  rational  intuitionism,  we  find  the  source  of  obligation 
attributed  in  part  to  feeling,  i.  e.,  to  "moral  sense" — in  the 


THE  EMOTIONAL  BASIS  OF  MORALITY  93 

case  of  Whewell  to  " sentiment."  Many  other  writers  we 
find,  like  Shaftesbury  himself  in  his  Inquiry,  terming  the  end 
toward  which  effort  should  be  directed  benevolence,  as  in 
The  Science  of  Duty,  by  Prof.  H.  N.  Day  (1808-1890),  the 
Theory  of  Morals,  by  R.  Hildreth  (1 807-1 865),  the  Moral 
Philosophy,  of  President  J.  H.  Fairchild  (18 17-1902),  and 
the  Theory  of  Good  and  Evil,  by  Canon  Hastings  Rashdall 
(1858-) ,  though  the  latter  by  no  means  accepts  Shaftesbury's 
conception  of  moral  sense.  Sometimes  we  find  used  the 
terms,  sympathy,  love,  or  love  of  being,  as  in  the  Theory  of 
Moral  Sentiment,  by  Adam  Smith  (1725-1790),  The 
Nature  of  Virtue,  by  Jonathan  Edwards  (1 703-1 758),  The 
Law  of  Love  and  Love  as  a  Law,  by  President  Mark  Hopkins 
( 1 802-1 887),  and  Problems  in  Ethics,  by  Prof.  J.  S. 
Kedney  (1819-1911).  Even  the  exceptional  views  of  Mrs. 
P.  E.  Fitzgerald,  in  her  Rational  Ideal  of  Morality,  whose 
whole  discussion  seems  to  be  based  upon  a  spiritualizing  of 
the  sexual  relations,  might  be  placed  in  the  same  category. 


CHAPTER    VII 

MODERN  ETHICAL  THEORIES  CONTINUED  '.  TELEOLOGICAL,  UTIL- 
ITARIAN, EVOLUTIONARY,   AND    SELF-REALIZATION    THEORIES 

Teleological  Theory — Association  with  it  of  the  Functional  Theory,  or 
Fitness — Connection  between  Fitness  and  Results  of  Experience — 
Hedonism  and  Eudaimonism  of  Bentham — Utilitarianism — Its 
Accord  with  Pragmatism  and  Common  Sense — Evolutionism  and 
Energism — Intuitions  and  Instincts  as  Results  of  Experience  and 
Inheritance — As  a  priori  Natural  Impulses — What  Evolutionism 
Leaves  Unsolved. — The  Self-Realization  Theory  versus  Evolu- 
tionary Materialism — A  Recognition  of  the  Importance  of  Non- 
selfish  as  Contrasted  with  Selfish  Motives — Modern  Development  of 
the  Spiritual  Ideal  in  Self-Realization — This  Conception  not  new, 
but  widely  Accepted  only  in  our  Time — Parallelism  between  it,  and 
the  Acceptance  by  Pragmatism  of  the  Ideal  as  the  True— High 
Moral  Intent  of  this  Conception ;  but  not  philosophically  Derived — 
Nor  practically  Satisfactory. 

MOST  of  the  writers  mentioned  near  the  close  of  the 
preceding  chapter  could  be  classed  as  accepting 
not  only  the  conception  of  benevolence  as  the  end 
of  moral  effort,  but  at  the  same  time  also  the  teleological 
theory,  this  latter  being  the  theory  in  accordance  with 
which  the  choice  of  some  moral  end  is  essential  to  the  deter- 
mining of  a  moral  act.  In  the  degree,  however,  in  which 
the  sympathetic  seems  to  a  writer  to  have  a  less  powerful 
tendency  toward  morality  than  does  the  rational,  the  end 
sought,  instead  of  being  termed  benevolence,  is  likely  to  be 
described  in  such  terms  as  the  common  good,  welfare,  and, 
with  a  suggestion  of  the  conception  of  self-realization,  to  be 
mentioned  on  page  100,  the  perfect  development  of  life,  or  per- 
fection. One  or  more  of  these  ends  we  find  emphasized  in 
The  Elements  of  Ethics,  by  Professor  N.  K.  Davis  (1830-), 
A  System  of  Ethics,  by  Professor  Frederick  Paulsen  (1846- 
1908),  The  Theory  of  Morals,  by  Professor  Paul  Janet 
(1 823-1 899),  The  Manual  of  Ethics,   by   Professor  J.   S. 

94 


FITNESS  95 

Mackenzie  (i860-),  The  Elements  of  Ethics,  by  Professor 
J.  H.  Muirhead  (1855-),  and  A  Study  of  Ethical  Principles, 
by  Professor  James  Seth  (i860-). 

There  is  always  a  tendency  wherever  moral  results  are 
traced  to  intellectual  processes  other  than  those  of  intuition, 
to  include  among  them  such  as  are  derivable  from  obser- 
vation and  experience.  This  leads  to  a  conception  of  the 
end  of  moral  action  that  suggests  at  once  the  functional 
theory  of  Socrates,  Plato,  and  Aristotle  mentioned  on  page 
72.  One  term  used  to  express  this  conception  is  fitness, — the 
fitness  of  an  action  for  the  circumstances,  the  occasion,  or 
the  object  in  view.  We  find  the  term  among  other  places  in 
The  Elements  of  Moral  Science,  by  President  Francis  Way- 
land  (1 796-1865),  and  in  the  Lectures  on  Moral  Philosophy, 
by  Professor  A.  P.  Peabody  (1811-1893).  It  appears  even 
as  early  and  notwithstanding  its  association  there  with 
the  innate  theory  of  conscience,  as  in  The  Unchangeable  Ob- 
ligations  of  Natural  Religion  of  Samuel  Clarke  (1675-1729). 

Fitness  cannot  be  ascribed  to  any  action  that  is  not  con- 
sidered in  relation  to  external  surroundings,  and  to  their 
influence  upon  it.  For  this  reason,  there  is  only  one  step — 
though  sometimes  it  is  a  long  step — between  this  conception 
and  that  which  associates  mental  results,  even  though 
distinctively  moral,  with  the  influences  of  material  and 
physical  circumstances.  Owing  in  part  to  this  fact,  but 
more  to  the  natural  reaction  which  is  apt  to  manifest  itself 
whenever  in  theory  morality  seems  to  be  made  too  exclus- 
ively a  matter  of  reasoning,  we  find  very  soon  after  the 
period  of  Cudworth  and  his  followers  mentioned  on  page  79  a 
revival  of  Greek  hedonism  tracing  morality  to  the  results  of 
pleasure  and  pain  experienced  in  the  physical  body  (see 
page  70) ;  and,  at  almost  the  same  time,  of  eudaimonism, 
which  may  be  said  to  trace  it  to  the  results  of  the  same 
experienced  in  the  mental  nature  (see  page  73). 

Both  these  theories  were  advocated  at  different  times  by 
Jeremy  Bentham  (1 748-1838),  author  of  an  Introduction  to 
the  Principles  of  Morals  and  Legislation  (see  footnote  ", 
on  page  66).  He  maintained  that  moral  conceptions  result 
from  what  man  has  learned  from  experiencing  pleasure  and 
pain.  In  one  regard,  this  theory  involved  ascribing  obliga- 
tions to  an  intellectual  source, — to  processes  of  induction 
and  inference;  but  in  another  regard,  to  a  sensational  source, 
— to  agreeable  or  disagreeable  feelings.     The  theory,  there- 


96  E  THICS  A  ND  NA  T  URAL  LA  W 

fore,  traced  obligation  to  both  rational  and  emotional 
influences.  But  of  these  all  were  the  results  of  experience. 
In  a  later  book,  Bentham,  evidently  desirous  of  not  ignoring 
the  conception  of  mental  non-selfishness,  developed  what  is 
termed  the  "greatest  happiness  theory," — the  theory  that 
the  morally  right  is  the  obtaining  of  the  greatest  happiness 
for  the  greatest  number.  In  his  Dentology,  too,  he  began  to 
indicate  further  distrust  in  the  absolutely  satisfactory  char- 
acter of  his  earlier  conceptions  by  using  in  place  of  happiness 
as  a  motive  to  action,  the  term  utility.  Archdeacon  Wil- 
liam Paley  (i 743-1 805),  following  the  lead  of  Bentham, 
maintained  in  his  Elements  of  Moral  and  Political  Philosophy 
that,  "Virtue  is  the  doing  good  to  mankind  in  obedience  to 
the  will  of  God  for  the  sake  of  eternal  happiness."  He  is 
usually  represented  as  attributing  obligation  to  self-interest ; 
which,  to  him,  of  course,  would  mean  enlightened  self- 
interest. 

The  general  theory  of  Bentham  was  adopted  and  very 
ably  defended,  as  well  as  amplified,  by  James  Mill  (1773- 
1836)  in  his  Analysis  of  the  Phenomena  of  the  Human  Mind, 
by  Alexander  Bain  (1 810-1877)  m  his  Mental  and  Moral 
Philosophy,  and  by  John  Stuart  Mill  (1 806-1 879)  in  his  Utili- 
tarianism,— a  term  which,  as  applied  to  ethics,  Mill  claims, 
in  his  autobiography,  to  have  originated. 

Henry  Sidgwick  too  (1 838-1 900),  in  his  Methods  of  Ethics, 
after  arguing  in  favor  of  the  intuitional  theory  as  applied 
to  the  action  of  conscience,  says,  in  Book  III.,  Chapter  XIV. : 
"The  intuitional  method,  rigorously  applied,  yields  as  the 
final  result  the  doctrine  of  pure  Universalistic  Hedonism, — 
which  it  is  convenient  to  denote  by  the  single  word,  Utili- 
tarianism."    Comte's  Positive  Philosophy  ends  similarly. 

In  this  theory  there  is,  of  course,  much  to  commend. 
Like  the  teleological  it  can  be  traced  back  to,  if  not  through, 
the  functional  criterion  of  the  three  greatest  Greek  philo- 
sophers (see  page  72) ;  and  of  all  theories  it  is  the  one  most 
logically  deducible  from  that  most  modern  of  philosophical 
methods  which  we  find  in  pragmatism.  If,  as  this  latter 
system  maintains,  we  can  judge  of  the  truth  in  any  depart- 
ment by  that  which  it  can  do,  or,  as  in  the  case  of  any  ideal, 
by  that  which  it  is  worth  to  the  one  who  adopts  it,  the 
criterion  of  utility  can  certainly  be  applied  to  morals. 
Moreover,  it  conforms  to  the  requirements  of  idealists,  not 
only,  but  of  those  who  have  merely  common  sense.     To 


UTILITARIANISM  97 

quote  from  Chap.  XIII.,  Sec.  2,  of  the  Ethics  of  (John) 
Dewey  (1859-)  and  (J.  H.)  Tufts  (1862-),  "the  positive 
truth  for  which  Bentham  and  Mill  stand  is  that  the  moral 
quality  of  any  impulse  or  active  tendency  can  be  told  only 
by  observing  the  sort  of  consequences  to  which  it  leads  in 
action";  and  this  conception,  so  far  as  it  goes,  is  true;  but 
there  are  also  other  conceptions  not  necessarily  included  in  it 
that  are  equally  true. 

The  teleological,  hedonian,  eudaimonian,  and  utilitarian 
theories  have  all  been  greatly  strengthened  of  late  years  by 
the  influence  of  modern  evolutionism.  The  logical  ten- 
dency of  this  theory,  as  most  of  us  will  recognize,  is  to 
ascribe  ethical,  as  well  as  other  forms  of  mental  develop- 
ment, to  the  operation  of  the  same  laws  to  which  the  theory 
attributes  the  more  intelligent  characteristics  of  insects, 
birds,  and  beasts, — in  other  words  to  the  results  of  ex- 
perience. The  conception,  which  is  almost  identical  with 
that  of  Locke,  is  that  men,  whether  considering  their  own 
actions  or  the  "actions  of  others  with  whom  they  have 
friendly  or  hostile  relations,  learn  what  to  do  or  what  not 
to  do  by  noticing  the  pleasure  or  pain  that  seems  to  accom- 
pany certain  courses  of  action.  Most  evolutionists  would 
probably  agree  with  Herbert  Spencer  (1830-1903),  who, 
in  Chapter  III.  of  his  Data  of  Ethics,  declares  the  "ultimate 
moral  aim  a  desirable  state  of  feeling  called  by  whatever 
name — gratification,  enjoyment,  happiness." 

With  reference  to  the  origin  of  the  sense  of  obligation 
which  prompts  effort  to  attain  this  end,  however,  evolu- 
tionary writers  show  less  agreement.  {See  their  definitions 
of  conscience,  Footnotes  4  and  I0,  pages  63  and  65.)  Prob- 
ably the  most  popular  view  among  them  is  the  view  suggested 
by  the  large  number  of  instincts  that  seem  to  be  derived 
from  inheritance, — like  one,  for  instance,  which  prompts  a 
dog  that  has  always  lived  in  a  house  to  make  the  motions 
with  his  nose  of  covering  with  sand  a  bone  that  he  wants  to 
keep.  Some  therefore  attribute  all  instincts  and,  because 
resembling  instincts,  all  intuitions  in  a  man  to  results  of 
the  same  kind, — results  that  are  owing  to  one's  own  pre- 
vious actions  or  to  those  of  his  forebears.  It  is  argued  that 
these  actions  have  cultivated  habits  of  body  or  of  mind 
of  which  ordinarily  no  one  is  conscious;  but  that,  when 
they  are  needed,  it  is  they,  and  therefore  methods  originally 
acquired  by  experience  that  reveal  themselves  in  what  men 


98  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

term  instinct  and  intuition.  This  conclusion  is  supposed  to 
accord  with  statements  like  one  made  by  Charles  Darwin 
( 1 809-1882)  in  Chapter  IV.  of  his  Descent  of  Man.  The  state- 
ment, by  the  way,  is  not  without  suggestion  of  the  concep- 
tion with  reference  to  the  moral  import  of  the  consciousness 
of  conflicting  desires  that  has  been  presented  in  this  volume. 
Darwin  says,  "  A  struggle  may  often  be  observed  in  animals 
between  the  different  instincts,  or  between  an  instinct  and 
some  habitual  disposition,  as  when  a  dog  makes  after  a 
hare,  is  rebuked,  pauses,  hesitates,  pauses  again,  or  returns 
ashamed  to  his  master."  In  this  struggle  between  an  ac- 
quired habit  of  will  and  an  original  natural  impulse  Dar- 
win recognizes  the  beginnings  of  conscience. 

It  is  important  to  notice,  however,  that  Darwin  does  not 
deny  that,  in  connection  with  the  development  of  conscience, 
there  is  an  original  natural  impulse.  In  Chapter  III.  of 
the  same  book  he  speaks  of  "A  short  and  imperious  ought," 
and  the  "  consciousness  of  the  existence  of  a  persistent 
instinct.''  Indeed,  not  only  Darwin  but  about  all  his 
more  prominent  followers  have  acknowledged  the  existence 
of  this.  Professor  Frank  Thilly  (1865-)  of  Cornell  University, 
in  Chapter  II.,  Section  4,  of  his  Introduction  to  Ethics,  says 
that  "Spencer  concedes  the  presence  of  an  a  priori  element, 
and  denies  that  conscience  is  merely  an  acquisition  of  individ- 
ual experience. "  ' '  According  to  Spencer,  the  essential  trait 
in  the  moral  consciousness  is  the  control  of  some  feeling  or 
feelings  by  some  other  feeling  or  feelings."  These  are  "not 
of  supernatural  origin,  but  of  natural  origin."  "With  this 
theory,"  he  adds,  "the  views  of  M.  Guyan,  Leslie  Stephen, 
B.  Carrier!,  H.  Hoffding,  G.  von  Gizycke,  R.  von  Shering, 
W.  Wundt,  T.  Paulsen,  S.  Alexander,  Hugo  Munsterberg, 
Paul  Ree,  Georg  Simmel,  and  A.  Sutherland  practically 
agree." 

Not  a  few  of  them  too,  like  Darwin  and  Spencer,  would 
go  further  than  this,  and  agree  with  the  statement  of  their 
sympathetic  critic,  Professor  T.  H.  Huxley,  in  his  essay  on 
Evolution  and  Ethics,  that  "The  practice  of  that  which  is 
ethically  best  .  .  .  involves  a  course  of  conduct  which,  in 
all  respects,  is  opposed  to  that  which  leads  to  success  in 
the  cosmic  struggle  for  existence."  It  will  be  noticed  that, 
according  to  this  acknowledgement,  the  principle  exempli- 
fied in  the  evolutionary  theory  may  be  applied  differently 
to  physical  and  to  psychical  development.     Why  is  this  so  ? 


SPIRITUAL  THEORY  OF  ETHICS  99 

The  answer  (see  J.  M.  Baldwin's  Darwin  and  the  Humani- 
ties, Chap.  III.)  is  that  "there  are  stages  of  transition 
between  .  .  .  the  physical  fitness  required  for"  the  in- 
dividual "and  the  social  fitness  required  for"  the  group. 
"The  group,  for  its  struggle,  requires  organization"  and 
1 '  utility  for  the  group  presupposes  self-control  and  altruism." 
This  view,  by  separating  social  requirements  from  inner 
individual  causes  seems  to  introduce  an  illogical  change 
into  methods  of  evolution.  The  theory  on  pages  32-34 
avoids  this  change  by  associating  human  mental  desires 
with  animal  a  priori  impulses  (page  98)  whose  psychical 
beginnings  antagonize  effects  of  the  physical  principle  of 
"the  survival  of  the  fittest." 

This  latter  principle,  if  supposed  to  indicate  the  re- 
lations that  should  exist  between  man  and  man,  would 
justify  savagery  and  warfare.  The  recognition  of  this  fact 
has  probably  had  not  a  little  influence  in  causing  the  popu- 
larity in  recent  years  of  what  may  be  termed  the  self-realiza- 
tion theory.  This  theory  is  related  by  way  of  reaction  to  the 
evolutionary  in  a  way  and  degree  parallel  to  that  in  which 
Platonism,  Stoicism,  neo-Platonism,  and  Christian  Mysti- 
cism were  related  to  the  various  forms  of  hedonism  or 
Epicureanism  which  they  followed.  The  theory  recognises 
clearly  that  the  methods  applicable  to  material  or  bodily 
conditions  are  not  applicable  to  conduct;  that  the  greatest 
physical  or  material  success  in  every  sense  may  be  attained 
when  a  man  is  brutal,  tyrannical,  and  inconsiderate;  but 
that  spiritual  success,  which  is  necessary  when  conduct  is 
involved,  can  never  be  attained  except  when  one  is  the 
opposite;  that  the  unselfish  conceptions  and  the  broad  out- 
look necessary  to  the  attainment  of  the  highest  morality 
can  never  be  the  outgrowth  of  that  alone  which  is  merely 
the  selfish  narrowness  characteristic  of  an  influence  essen- 
tially physical. 

The  most  important  of  the  books  that  have  been  written 
as  a  result  of  this  conception  is  the  Prolegomena  of  Ethics, 
by  Professor  T.  H.  Green  (1 836-1 883)  of  Oxford  Univer- 
sity. This  author  distinguishes  clearly  between  that  which 
works  in  the  bodily  and  in  the  mental.  He  says,  in  Book  II. 
A.,  "The  one  divine  mind  gradually  reproduces  itself  in  the 
human  soul.  In  virtue  of  this  principle  in  him,  man  has 
definite  capabilities,  the  realization  of  which  .  .  .  forms  his 
true  good.     They  are  not  realized,  however,  ...  in  any 


IOO  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

life  that  has  been,  or  is;  .  .  .  yet  .  .  .  the  idea  of  his 
having  such  capabilities  ...  is  a  moving  influence  in 
him.  ...  As  his  true  good  is  or  would  be  their  complete 
realization,  so  his  goodness  is  proportionate  to  his  habitual 
responsiveness  to  the  idea."  This  conception  of  self- 
realization  i.e.,  of  making  real  the  ideal  of  the  better  or 
spiritual  self — has  taken  a  strong  hold  among  many  of  the 
more  modern  students  of  ethics.  As  expressed  by  F.  H. 
Bradley  (1846-  )  in  Essay  II.  of  his  Ethical  Studies,  "In 
morality,  the  existence  of  my  mere  private  self  as  such  is 
something  which  ought  not  to  be.  .  .  .  Realize  yourself 
as  the  self-conscious  member  of  an  infinite  whole  by  realiz- 
ing that  whole  in  yourself." 

This  general  thought  thus  expressed  is  not  entirely  new. 
Like  so  many  other  important  ideas  apparently  originated  in 
our  own  time,  it  was  at  least  suggested  by  the  great  philos- 
ophers of  ancient  Greece.  According  to  Xenophon  in  his 
Memorabilia,  III.,  8,  Socrates  declared  self-knowledge  to  be 
the  good  end  for  which  man  should  strive,  and  in  Book  X., 
Chapter  VII.,  of  the  Ethics  of  Aristotle  we  are  told  that  "the 
supreme  good  is  not  pleasure  nor  honor  nor  wealth  but  happi- 
ness and  independence  which  consists  in  the  exercise  of  rea- 
son or  self-sufficiency."  In  our  own  times,  the  effect  of 
this  conception  upon  ethical  thought  has  been  very  great. 
It  finds  expression  in  many  different  treatises  which  in 
other  regards  are  by  no  means  similar;  for  instance,  in  the 
Methods  of  Ethics  by  Professor  Henry  Sidgwick  (1838- 
1900)  of  Oxford;  the  Manual  of  Ethics  by  Professor  J.  S. 
Mackenzie  (i860-  )  of  the  College  of  South  Wales;  the 
Elements  of  Ethics  by  Professor  J.  H.  Muirhead  (1855-  ) 
of  Birmingham  University;  A  Study  of  Ethical  Principles 
by  Professor  James  Seth  (i860-  )  of  Edinburgh  Univer- 
sity; the  Introduction  to  Ethics  by  Professor  Frank  Thilly 
(1865-  )  of  Cornell  University;  The  Philosophy  of  Conduct 
by  ProfessorS.  A.  Martin  (1853-  )  of  Lafayette  College ;  and 
Self -Realization,  an  Outline  of  Ethics  by  Professor  H.  W. 
Wright  (1878-    )  of  Lake  Forest  College. 

Even  modern  pragmatism,  notwithstanding  its  logical 
acceptance  of  utilitarianism  which  was  mentioned  on  page 
96,  has  not  escaped  endeavors  to  conform  the  term  "self- 
realization"  to  its  requirements.  To  quote  from  Professor 
W.  R.  B.  Gibson  (1869-  )  of  Melbourne  University  in 
Lecture  VIII.  of  his  Philosophical  Introduction  to  Ethics, 


SELF-REALIZATION  THEORY  OF  ETHICS  101 

"This  is  the  central  conviction  of  pragmatism  .  .  .  that 
nothing  is  real  to  us  except  in  so  far  as  we  realize  it.  .  .  . 
The  concretest  and  most  fundamental  expression  of  self- 
consciousness  is  the  postulate.  ...  A  postulate  is  an 
idea  that  has  matured  its  motor-factors,  an  idea  in  the 
attitude  of  self-realization  of  working  itself  out.  In  this 
sense  it  seems  to  me  almost  if  not  quite  identical  with  the 
motive  in  Green's  use  of  the  term  as  a  self- appropriated 
motive,  the  motive  with  which  the  self  has  identified  itself." 
This  postulate  is  "  an  end  or  ideal  of  action  accepted  by  the 
individual's  practical  consciousness  as  a  right  of  its  own 
moral  nature,  transmuted  into  a  moral  imperative.  The 
demand  for  perfection  is  .  .  .  for  that  which  can  harmon- 
ize the  whole  of  life,  and  stand  all  tests." 

Few  can  fail  to  recognize  the  high  moral  intent  of  the 
conception  of  life  and  of  the  aim  of  the  individual  in  life 
that  is  brought  out  in  The  Prolegomena  of  Ethics.  But  to 
this  conception  considered  as  a  complete  statement  of  the 
whole  of  a  man's  duty,  there  are  three  philosophical  objec- 
tions. One  has  to  do  with  its i logical  premise  and  the  others 
with  its  practical  results.  The  premise  is  not  grounded  upon 
a  proved  fact,  but  upon  a  supposition,  or,  at  most,  a  deduc- 
tion. That  there  is  One  Spirit  pervading  and  animating 
every  human  agency  of  intelligence  is  the  testimony  of  faith 
and,  as  many  think,  of  revelation;  and  a  religious  sect,  like 
that  termed  Christian  Science,  may  be  justified  in  accepting 
the  testimony  as  a  suggestion  or  confirmation  of  its  system 
of  doctrine.  But  a  philosophical  system  should  start  with 
facts  that  can  be  known,  and  facts  with  reference  to  the 
mind  cannot  become  known  except  by  searching  for  them, 
in  part  at  least,  in  consciousness.  The  existence  of  one 
spirit  influencing  all  in  the  way  indicated  in  the  Prolegomena 
may  be  inferred  from  the  facts  of  consciousness ;  but  it  is  not 
itself  discoverable  there. 

Again,  two  practical  results  of  this  conception  are  not 
satisfactory.  The  first  of  these  results  will  become  evident 
upon  noticing  again  the  quotation  from  Professor  Green 
on  page  99.  In  referring  to  the  definite  capabilities,  the 
realization  of  which  forms  "a  man's  true  good,"  he  says, 
1 '  they  are  not  realized  in  any  life  that  has  been  or  is. "  Here 
is  a  chance  for  the  same  separation  between  theoretic  and 
practical  ethics  as  is  attributed  on  pages  80-84  of  this  vol- 
ume to  the  moral  philosophy  of  Kant.   The  truth  seems  to  be 


102  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

that  a  man  can  possess  no  ideal  that  will  greatly  benefit  him,  if 
at  the  same  time,  he  believes  in  his  heart  that  it  is  impos- 
sible for  him  to  realize  it.  This  is  the  case  even  though  he 
may  believe  it  possible  to  realize  it  in  a  future  spiritual 
state  of  existence,  though  not  in  the  present.  Ideas  cause 
immediate  action  in  the  degree  of  their  seeming  to  be 
immediately  attainable.  The  moment  that  this  statement 
is  accepted,  it  leads  on  to  the  second  reason  why  the 
practical  results  of  the  conception  are  unsatisfactory.  They 
are  so  because  the  ideal  presented  by  it  to  the  mind  is  not 
inclusive  of  all  a  man's  obligations ;  and,  therefore,  even  when 
explained  as  meaning  the  realization  not  of  the  lower  but 
of  the  higher  self,  it  manifests  a  tendency  in  the  direction 
of  more  or  less  narrowness  of  vision.  It  is  simply  not  true 
that  every  duty  of  a  human  being  clothed  in  a  physical 
body  with  physical  surroundings  can  be  fulfilled  by  regard- 
ing solely  his  relations  to  the  spiritual  life  of  which  man  is  a 
part  and  partner;  and  much  less  by  regarding  solely  his 
relation  to  this  spiritual  life  as  embodied  in  his  fellow  men. 
This  general  subject  is  discussed  in  Chapter  X.  of  the  present 
volume.  Here  it  is  sufficient  to  remind  the  reader  that, 
while  a  Stoic  like  Marcus  Aurelius  in  Book  VIII.  of  his 
Meditations,  could  say  "work  in  harmony  with  the  universal 
intelligence  as  your  breath  does  with  the  air,"  he,  or,  at 
least,  great  numbers  of  his  fellow  Stoics,  could  deem  it  not 
logically  inconsistent  with  so  sublime  a  sentiment  to  culti- 
vate indifference  to  human  suffering  and  disregard  of  human 
necessities.  The  same  has  been  true  of  others  holding  a 
similar  theory  as  manifested  in  asceticism,  mysticism,  and 
other  allied  conceptions.  So  long  as  a  man  lives  in  a  world 
partly  physical  as  well  as  mental,  he  must  be  under  certain 
obligations  to  his  body;  to  the  opinions  which  he  forms  with 
reference  to  his  bodily  surroundings  and  the  rights  that 
accrue  to  him  in  view  of  them.  So  long,  too,  as  he  possesses 
individuality,  it  is  incumbent  upon  him  to  regard,  in  some 
degree,  and  not  to  neglect  wholly,  even  for  the  purpose  of 
serving  others,  this  body  of  his  and  these  opinions  and  rights. 
His  principle  of  action  should  be  to  love  his  neighbor  not 
better  than  himself  but  as  himself,  Lev.  19:18.  Of  course, 
all  this  is  practically  acknowledged  by  the  most  of  those 
who  think  that  they  accept  the  theory  of  the  Prolegomena; 
but  the  question  under  discussion  now  is  not  what  they 
practically  acknowledge  but  what  is  the  legitimate  logical 


SELF-REALIZATION  THEORY  OF  ETHICS  IO3 

conclusion  to  be  drawn  from  their  theory.  Only  when  this 
question  has  been  answered,  can  one  feel  assured  that  the 
theory  itself  has  been  treated  in  a  way  that  is  philosophically 
satisfactory. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

MORALITY    ATTRIBUTED    TO    THINKING,    FEELING,    OR    BOTH, 

WHETHER   THROUGH    INTUITION,    INSTINCT,    REASONING, 

OR    OBSERVING 

Summary  of  our  Review  of  Ethical  Theories — The  Attributing  of  Right 
Conduct  to  Thinking,  through  Intuition  or  Reasoning — How  this 
Fails  to  Accord  with  the  Testimony  of  Consciousness — Moral 
Influence  of  Thinking  alone  upon  Practical  Results — Upon  Philo- 
sophic Theory — The  Attributing  of  Right  Conduct  to  Feeling 
whether  Resulting  from  Instinct  or  Experience — Arguments  for  and 
against  this  Conception — Its  Influence  upon  Practical  Results — 
Upon  Philosophic  Theory — The  Attributing  of  Right  Conduct  to 
Thinking  and  Feeling  in  Combination — The  Necessary  Conditions 
underlying  this  Conception. 

OUR  brief  review  of  the  principal  ethical  theories  has 
shown  us  that  their  advocates  have  not  failed, 
either  singly  or  collectively,  to  emphasize  most  of 
the  important  facts  with  reference  to  their  subject.  Their 
failures,  so  far  as  this  word  may  be  justly  used,  have  been 
owing  to  errors  in  determining  the  proportionate  amount 
of  consideration  that  should  be  given  to  these  facts, — in  de- 
termining which  of  them  should  be  treated  as  fundamental, 
which  as  of  slight  importance,  and  which  should  be  entirely 
ignored.  The  theories  have  been  shown  to  differ,  first  of 
all,  in  this, — that  some  of  them,  like  institutionism  when 
broadly  interpreted,  attribute  the  primary  source  of  obli- 
gation and  usually  too  the  end  toward  which  its  fulfillment 
should  be  directed,  to  what  may  be  said  to  come  from  outside 
the  man  i.e.,  to  what  he  has  observed  in  his  surroundings, 
as  in  the  manners  and  customs  of  society  and  in  the  laws 
of  government;  and  that  some  attribute  the  same  to  what 
may  be  said  to  come  from  within  the  man  i.e.,  to  his  own 
thoughts  and  to  what,  in  a  popular  sense  may  be  termed  his 
feelings.     This  distinction  applies,  of  course,  merely  to  in- 

104 


MORALITY  ATTRIBUTED  TO  THINKING  105 

fluences  supposed  to  be  primary.  It  could  not  apply  to  those 
acknowledged  to  be  secondary.  It  needs  to  be  noticed  also 
that  of  those  who  attribute  the  primary  source  or  end  of  ob- 
ligation, or  both  of  these,  to  what  may  be  said  to  come  from 
within  the  man,  some  ascribe  it  to  his  thinking,  some  to  his 
feeling  and  some  to  the  combined  effects  of  both  of  these. 

We  have  already,  on  pages  62  and  86-89,  considered  the  re- 
sults of  extreme  and  exclusive  institutionism.  It  will  not  be 
necessary,  therefore,  to  mention  these  results  again  except 
incidentally.  But  with  reference  to  the  practical  workings 
of  the  other  theories — those  that  associate  obligation  with 
what  is  supposed  to  originate  within  the  man — it  seems  im- 
portant here  that  something  more  should  be  said.  Let  us 
notice,  first,  the  theories  that  attribute  moral  influences  to 
his  thinking.  These  theories  range  all  the  way  from  those  of 
extreme  intuitionists  to  those  of  extreme  empiricists.  The 
intuitionists  hold  either  that  the  right  and  wrong  in  certain 
cases,  like  those  of  theft  and  cruelty,  are  recognized  by  reason 
intuitively,  and  in  such  a  way  that  among  all  men  its  judg- 
ments are  virtually  the  same;  or  else  they  hold  that  right 
and  wrong  are  determined  by  using  intuition  in  the  same 
way  in  which  it  is  used  in  other  cases;  i.  e.,  when  associated 
with  the  action  of  the  other  reasoning  powers.  The  em- 
piricists ascribe  a  knowledge  of  right  and  wrong  to  what 
one  can  apprehend  or  argue  to  be  for  his  own  good,  either 
because  of  his  individual  experience  of  the  pleasurable  or 
painful  results  of  his  own  actions,  or  because  of  what  he 
has  learned  of  these  results — from  the  sayings  or  doings, 
including  the  enacted  laws,  of  others. 

Concerning  the  theories  of  all,  whether  intuitionists  or 
empiricists,  who  ascribe  ethical  influences  to  mere  think- 
ing, the  first  fact  to  be  observed  is  that  their  conception  of 
doing  right  does  not  accord  with  that  of  which  many  men 
seem  to  be  conscious,  and  of  which  they  prefer  to  think  that 
other  men  are  conscious.  Apparently,  few  can  be  com- 
pletely satisfied  with  themselves  when  they  are  consciously 
disregarding  feeling,  and  acting  solely  from  motives  of 
rationality,  prudence,  or  calculation.  Is  it  a  fact  that  we 
give  expression  to  these  latter,  and  to  these  alone,  when  in 
the  presence  of  those  for  whom  we  have  affection  or  even 
high  regard?  Do  we  admire  others  whom  we  suppose  to  be 
always  under  the  influence  of  such  motives?  Do  we  believe 
that  such  motives  alone  can  do  all  for  ourselves  or  for  others 


106  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

that  is  necessary  in  order  that  one  should  invariably  do 
right  ?  Does  one  exaggerate  when  he  says  that  probably  no 
people  are  more  thoroughly  disliked,  if  not  despised,  by  a 
larger  number  of  their  fellows  than  those  who  convey  the 
impression  of  doing  everything  as  a  result  not  of  feeling  but 
of  intellectual  insight  or  calculation  ?  Even  though  they  may 
do  right,  do  not  many  of  their  fellows  seem  to  think  that  this 
is  done  in  a  wrong  way  ?  People  miss  from  such  action  that 
which  could  give  it  vitality, — that  which  seems  necessary  in 
order  to  make  it  represent  the  whole  life  of  the  man.  How 
can  such  action  represent  this,  they  ask,  if  feeling  be  a  part 
of  life,  and  there  be  no  evidence  in  what  one  says  or  does 
of  the  influence  within  him  of  those  most  powerful  feelings 
which  .men  term  conscientiousness,  sympathy,  and  love? 
Of  course  men  differ  greatly  with  reference  to  the  quality 
and  objects  of  the  rational  action  which,  according  to  them, 
determine  obligation.  But  whether  they  attribute  it  to  the 
work  of  intuitive  reason,  aimed  for  the  most  rational  ends, 
or  to  the  result  of  worldly  experience  directed  to  the  attain- 
ment of  personal  advantage,  the  limitations  suggested  by 
any  theory  that  excludes  the  influence  of  the  feelings  seem 
indisputable. 

So  far  as  a  man  acts  upon  the  principle  of  doing  only,  or 
even  mainly,  that  which  appears  rational,  he  never  will  do 
a  large  number  of  things  which  most  people  believe  that 
every  true  man  ought  to  do.  Why,  if  running  no  risk  of 
being  discovered,  should  he  refrain  from  lying,  or  cheating, 
or  stealing  when,  by  doing  so,  he  can  benefit  not  only  himself 
but  his  family,  his  friends,  his  church,  his  nation?  Why,  if 
it  may  threaten  harm  to  his  influence  or  personality,  should 
he  help  through  controversy  or  conflict,  the  poor,  the  de- 
spised, the  wronged,  the  oppressed,  the  beaten?  Why 
should  he  sacrifice  his  reputation,  his  comfort,  or  his  life,  in 
order  to  proclaim  an  unpopular  truth,  advocate  a  persecuted 
cause,  or  die  for  a  country?  Why  not  keep  his  mouth  shut, 
turn  traitor  to  his  convictions,  and  run  away  to  another 
country?  There  is  but  one  answer.  It  is  because  he  is  a 
man  true  to  himself,  recognizing  how  essential  is  that  part 
of  himself  which  gives  him  the  feelings  that  men  ascribe  to 
conscientiousness,  humanitarianism,  and  public  spirit.  It 
may  not  seem  rational  to  become  a  martyr  for  a  cause 
or  a  nation,  but  he  feels  that  it  is  right;  and  there  is 
nothing  possible  to  merely   the  reasoning  or  calculating 


MORALITY  ATTRIBUTED  TO  THINKING  107 

powers  of  intellect  alone  that  could  account  for  such 
feelings. 

These  practical  conclusions  with  reference  to  the  subject 
are  confirmed  when  we  come  to  consider  its  theoretic  as- 
pects. Philosophically,  it  is  difficult  to  conceive  how  any- 
one can  suppose  that  a  mere  recognition,  either  as  a  result 
of  instinctive  perception  or  of  reflective  argument,  that 
certain  actions  are  wise  or  right  can  account  for  the 
sense  or  prompting  of  obligation.  As  Professor  Frederick 
Paulsen  says  in  Book  II.,  Chapter  V.  of  his  System  of  Ethics, 
as  translated  by  Frank  Thilly,  "The  impulses  are  the  weights 
so  to  speak,  which  keep  the  clockwork  of  life  in  motion;  the 
reason  cannot  take  their  place.  It  has  no  motive  force  of 
its  own" — a  statement,  that,  as  will  be  seen,  accords  exactly 
with  what  was  said  on  pages  36  to  50  of  the  present 
volume  with  reference  to  the  fact  that  desires — which 
involve  feelings — underlie  all  our  mental  processes.  In- 
tuition and  reasoning  have  a  great  deal  to  do  with  right 
action.  But  neither  of  the  two  is  that  which  starts  it,  or 
gives  it  an  end  to  attain.  When  a  man  has  a  prompting  of 
conscience,  the  first  thing  that  he  experiences  is  a  feeling. 
When  he  is  incited  to  betterment,  the  first  thing  that 
touches  his  intellect  comes  through  a  sentiment  or  ideal;  and 
both  are  widely  acknowledged  to  be  the  results  of  thought 
when  influenced  by  emotion.  Of  the  reasoning  or  calcu- 
lation through  which,  subsequently,  that  which  influences 
him  is  developed  into  particular  acts  of  conduct,  he  becomes 
conscious  later. 

Let  us  turn  then  to  feeling — still  using  this  word  in  its 
broad  and  popular  sense — and  observe  how  far  the  source 
and  results  of  the  sense  of  obligation  can  be  attributed 
solely  or  mainly  to  it.  As  in  the  case  of  those  who  attribute 
these  to  thinking,  the  advocates  of  this  theory  are  numerous 
and  are  distributed  both  among  those  who  emphasize  the 
influence  of  instinct  or  intuition,  and  those  who  are  empiri- 
cists. The  followers  of  Shaftesbury,  for  instance,  who,  as 
was  said  on  page  91  made  feeling  the  basis  of  the  "moral 
sense"  theory,  are  usually  termed  emotional  intuitionists ; 
and  the  study  of  the  influences  of  pleasure  and  pain  upon 
ethical  development  on  the  part  of  many  modern  evolution- 
ists is  a  result  of  tracing  obligation  to  emotion  or  feeling, 
even  though  this  is  done  through  an  empirical  method. 

On  first  thought,  the  attributing  of  the  sense  of  ob- 


108  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

ligation  to  feeling  seems  to  conform  to  the  ordinary  con- 
ceptions of  the  ordinary  man  much  more  closely  than  do  the 
theories  attributing  it  to  reason.  Every  child,  and  almost 
every  grown  person,  speaks  of  recognizing  right  and  wrong 
by  conscience,  and  when  he  says  conscience  he  is  referring 
to  what  is  experienced  within  him  as  a  feeling.  One  is 
often  asked,  therefore,  by  what  authority  philosophy  can 
deny  a  condition  of  which  almost  everyone  seems  conscious. 
The  opponents  of  the  theory  say  that  it  is  because  the  feel- 
ing is  always  accompanied  by  thought.  Yes,  says  the  other, 
and  so  is  every  feeling.  An  inflammation  of  the  little  finger, 
which  calls  attention  to  itself,  is  accompanied  by  thought; 
lonesomeness  and  grief  are  accompanied  by  thought;  yet 
these  facts  do  not  render  it  impossible  to  separate  the  feel- 
ing from  the  thought.  But  the  feeling  of  conscience,  says 
his  opponent,  is  authoritative;  it  must  include  something 
more  than  feeling  in  order  to  convey  a  sense  of  obligation. 
Every  feeling  of  itself  alone,  answers  the  other,  conveys  a 
sense  of  obligation.  If  we  disobey  the  promptings  of  taste, 
and  fail  to  masticate  our  food,  we  cannot  digest  it.  If  we 
disobey  the  promptings  of  hunger  and  thirst,  and  fail  to 
swallow,  we  cannot  live.  The  attributing  of  the  sense  of 
obligation  to  a  feeling  in  consciousness  seems  therefore  to 
have  a  certain  justification.  But  when  one  comes  to  con- 
sider the  practical  results  of  ascribing  it  to  this,  either  exclu- 
sively or  sometimes  primarily,  he  finds  reason  to  doubt  the 
theory.  Many  who  admit  that,  at  times,  they  do  things 
impulsively  without  calculation  of  the  consequences,  and 
that  these  things  turn  out  to  be  right,  are  not  sure  that  they 
were  right  because  impulsive,  or  that  they  might  not  have 
been  wrong.  Many  too  who  have  had  much  experience  in 
the  world  have  noticed  in  themselves  and  in  others  influ- 
ences that  affect  the  mind  through  observation,  association, 
habit,  custom,  knowledge  of  facts  or  of  human  nature  in 
such  ways  as  to  modify  results  connected  not  only  with 
their  own  applications  of  these  promptings,  but  with  the 
very  nature  of  the  promptings  themselves.  For  instance, 
many  boys  in  Kansas  would  intuitively  feel  it  wrong  to 
drink  a  glass  of  beer.  Is  it  possible  to  conceive  of  a  boy  in 
Bavaria  who  should  feel  the  same?  An  American  could 
not  conscientiously  sink  a  passenger  ship  full  of  women  and 
children.  A  Prussian  could.  Anyone  who  admits  these 
to  be  facts  must  agree  thus  far  with  the  theorists  who 


MORALITY  ATTRIBUTED  TO  FEELING  109 

ascribe  the  sense  of  obligation  in  part  to  thinking,  or  to  experi- 
encing the  effects  of  thinking,  as  distinguished  from  feeling. 
A  still  stronger  argument  in  favor  of  this  latter  view  is 
presented  by  the  practical  results  that  follow  reliance  upon 
feeling  alone  as  the  criterion  of  right  action.  The  most 
common  excuse  for  inconsiderateness,  unkindness,  mean- 
ness, oppression,  extortion,  persecution,  and  massacre  is 
that  the  perpetrators  of  it  were  sincere,  by  which  is  meant 
conscientious, — a  word  that  has  no  relation  to  the  subject 
except  so  far  as  the  one  using  it  holds  to  the  theory  that 
right  is  right,  aside  from  all  instruction  or  argument  that 
can  develop  the  thinking  powers  directly  or  the  intuitive 
powers  indirectly.  It  is  because  the  savage  is  following  his 
instinctive  or  emotional  promptings  with  reference  to  what 
is  right  or  wrong  that  he  cheats  or  eats  his  enemies,  and 
multiplies  or  murders  his  wives.  It  is  because  some  of  the 
Turks  of  to-day,  as  did  some  Christians  of  the  fifteenth 
century,  trust  solely  in  their  emotional  promptings  respect- 
ing conduct,  that  they  are  exterminating  by  fire  and  sword 
those  who  differ  from  them  in  matters  of  mere  information, 
understanding,  or  association.  It  is  because  so  many  people 
surrounding  us  believe  in  a  sort  of  combination  of  a  temper- 
amental and  a  categorical  imperative  revealed  through 
feeling  in  such  ways  as  to  make  the  motive,  irrespec- 
tive of  consequences,  determine  the  ethical  quality,  that, 
following  the  example  of  others,  they  are  oppressive  to  their 
employees,  dishonest  to  their  customers,  cruel  to  their 
children,  snobbish  to  their  neighbors,  and,  possibly  in  most 
of  the  relations  of  life,  are  promoters  of  that  which  is  evil 
instead  of  good,  and  yet  are  little  more  doubtful  about  the 
righteousness  of  their  actions  than  they  would  be  if  they 
were  exceptionally  considerate,  just,  kindly,  democratic, 
and  public-spirited.  The  reason  for  this,  of  course,  is  that 
the  promptings  of  the  feeling  which  is  supposed  to  be  con- 
science are  not  always,  when  considered  in  themselves  alone, 
truthful  and  wise.  For  instance,  a  friend  of  the  author  had  a 
romantic  attachment  for  a  woman  whom,  for  good  reasons, 
he  did  not  marry.  Years  after,  when  she  had  married 
another,  and  he  himself  had  married  not  very  happily,  he 
lived  near  her  home.  He  told  the  author  once  that  when- 
ever he  met  her,  a  feeling  which  only  thinking  enabled 
him  to  distinguish  from  conscience  constantly  impelled  him 
to  tell  her  what  it  seemed  to  him  that  she  had  a  ris:ht  to 


HO  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

know, — namely,  that  she  was  the  only  woman  whom  he  had 
ever  really  loved,  or  could  love.  And,  yet,  if,  in  the  cir- 
sumstances,  he  had  told  her  this,  hardly  any  right-minded 
man  would  not  have  felt  justified  in  considering  him  a  dis- 
honorable sneak. 

The  theoretical  as  distinguished  from  the  practical  objec- 
tions to  assigning  the  sense  of  obligation  to  feeling  alone  are 
just  as  strong  as  those  assigning  it  to  thinking  alone.  Man 
is  a  thinking  being,  and  it  is  as  such  that  anything  that  is  to 
influence  him  as  a  man  should  influence  him.  His  feelings 
would  be  of  no  use  to  him  whatever  unless,  in  some  way, 
they  were  connected  with  his  thinking. 

This  statement  brings  us  to  what  is  to  be  said  of  the  third 
class  of  ethical  theorists — those  who  assign  the  source  and 
end  of  the  sense  of  obligation  to  the  combined  effects  of 
thinking  and  feeling.  The  first  suggestion  here  is  of  practi- 
cal obstacles  to  the  application  of  the  theory.  It  does  not 
seem  fitted  to  prescribe  the  limits  of  the  influence  of  thought 
upon  the  one  side  or  of  feeling  upon  the  other.  As  a  result 
there  is  no  certainty  that  those  who  accept  this  view  will 
avoid  the  dangers  attributable  to  either  of  the  other  theories. 
Besides  this,  that  tendency  in  the  human  mind  to  resolve  all 
possible  conceptions  into  some  single  one  that  shall  make  a 
unity  of  complexity,  seems  to  be  instinctively  opposed  to 
giving  approximately  equal  recognition  to  two  sources  of 
influence.  On  account  of  this  tendency,  there  are  few 
writers  upon  ethics,  no  matter  how  strenuously  they  may 
claim  to  ascribe  due  consideration  to  the  effects  of  both 
thought  and  feeling,  and  to  be  misrepresented  by  those 
affirming  that  they  do  not  so  ascribe  them  who  have  failed 
to  be  classed  as  adherents  of  some  theory,  like  that  of 
"utilitarianism"  or  of  "moral  sense,"  which  they  them- 
selves did  not  intend  to  accept. 

What  is  needed,  therefore,  in  order  to  satisfy  the  demands 
in  ethics  of  both  theory  and  practice  is  that  the  effects  of 
obligation  shall  be  traced  both  to  thought  and  to  feeling, 
but  to  each  of  these  when  acting  in  such  a  non-exclusive 
way  as  to  prevent  either  of  them  from  being  more  in- 
fluential proportionately  than  it  should  be.  This,  as  will 
be  perceived  at  once,  would  ascribe  obligation  to  a  union 
of  thought  and  feeling,  and  yet  a  union  of  such  a  character 
that  the  influence  of  neither  would  be  exercised  in  any  way 
except  conjointly  with  that  of  the  other. 


CHAPTER  IX 

CONSCIENCE,      A      CONSCIOUSNESS      OF     CONFLICT      BETWEEN 
DESIRES   OF   THE   BODY   AND   OF   THE   MIND 

Thinking  and  Feeling  Are  Both  United  in  Human  Desire— How  Desires 
of  the  Mind  can  be  Made  to  Seem  Authoritative— The  Facts  Fit 
the  Ordinary  Conception  of  the  Meaning  of  Conscience — The  Func- 
tion Assigned  to  Conscience  here  Is  not  Unimportant — Can  this 
Conception  of  it  include  all  the  Requirements  of  Conscience?— 
Conscience  is  Primarily  Felt  within — Never  Experienced  except  in 
Connection  with  a  Conflict  between  Higher  and  Lower  Desires — 
Even  the  Perversions  of  Conscience  Show  this — This  Conception  of 
Conscience  Follows  Logically  upon  Modern  Theories  Concerning  the 
Subject — The  Conception  can  be  Reconciled  with  other  Functions 
of  Conscience — Conscience  as  Related  to  the  Choice  of  an  End 
toward  which  Obligation  Inclines — Many  Ethical  Theories  not  Suf- 
ficiently Comprehensive  and  Fundamental — Mental  Control  as  an 
Agency  in  the  Stimulating  of  Mental  Activity — In  the  Developing 
of  Intelligence — In  the  Recognizing  of  Spiritual  Communality — 
Summary  of  the  View  of  Conscience  here  Presented — The  Impor- 
tance^ Using  all  the  Possibilities  of  Mind  to  Prevent,  in  Case  of 
Conflict  with  Bodily  Influences,  its  Being  Outweighed  by  them — 
Difference  between  the  Conception  of  Conscience  Presented  in 
these  Pages  and  other  Somewhat  Similar  Conceptions. 


IS  it  possible  to  find  thought  and  feeling  of  the  nature 
described  at  the  close  of  the  preceding  chapter, — 
thought  that  is  authoritative,  yet  not  in  such  a  way  as 
to  interfere  with  the  authority  of  feeling;  and  feeling  that  is 
authoritative,  yet  not  in  such  a  way  as  to  interfere  with  the 
authority  of  thinking?  Yes,  they  can  be  found — very 
simply  and  naturally  too — merely  by  observing  the  logical 
development  of  the  condition  of  mind  already  described 
as  being  presented  to  a  man  in  his  first  moments  of  con- 
sciousness. On  pages  5  and  6  it  was  said  that  this  made 
him  aware  of  the  impulses  that  are  the  beginnings  of  desires, 
and  that  these,  even  if  manifested  in  mere  appetite  differ 

in 


112  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

from  what  we  term  appetite  in  a  lower  animal  because,  in- 
asmuch as  a  man  is  a  thinking  being,  we  cannot  conceive  of 
him,  as  we  can  of  the  latter  as  having  an  appetite  wholly  sep- 
arated from  thinking.  A  desire  is  therefore  a  combination 
of  the  effects  of  both  thought  and  feeling, — the  very  condi- 
tion that  has  been  shown  to  be  needed  in  order  to  meet 
the  first  of  the  requirements  indicated  on  page  no.  The 
second  of  the  requirements  was  that  thought  and  feeling 
should  be  so  combined  as  to  render  it  inconceivable  that 
either  should  be  exercised  in  any  other  way  than  by  these 
two  when  acting  conjointly.  This  requirement  would  be 
met  because  the  only  factors  contributing  to  the  result 
would  be  desires;  and  every  desire,  as  we  have  found,  is  a 
combination  of  thought  and  feeling. 

But  how,  it  may  be  asked,  could  any  combination  of  the 
two,  as  represented  in  a  desire,  be  made  to  seem  authori- 
tative? The  answer  is  that,  according  to  what  has  been 
said  already  on  page  59,  the  very  first  consciousness  that 
a  man  has  is  of  desires,  and,  very  soon  toe,  of  these  not  alone 
but  of  these  in  conflict.  Anyone  conscious  of  conflict — to 
repeat,  because  of  its  importance,  what  was  said  on  page  56 
must  be  conscious  of  inward  unrest,  disturbance,  disorder; 
and  conscious,  therefore,  that  the  conflict  ought  to  be  made 
to  cease.  A  feeling  that  anything  ought  to  be  done  involves 
some  feeling  of  obligation.  But,  in  this  case,  the  feeling  is 
enhanced,  owing  to  the  fact  that  the  conflict  is  between 
bodily  desires,  which  a  man  possesses  in  common  with  the 
lower  animals,  and  mental  desires,  which  are  peculiarly 
human.  To  the  latter,  therefore,  according  to  a  law  of 
nature  (see  page  58),  he  feels  particularly  obligated  to  give 
expression. 

In  this  case  the  facts  seem  to  fit  exactly  the  requirements 
that  most  of  us  associate  with  conscience, — something  that 
arouses  an  individual  sense  of  obligation,  and,  with  it, 
because  it  demands  attention,  awakens  our  rational  powers, 
acting  sometimes  intuitively  and  sometimes  reflectively; 
and  may  awaken  also,  because  directing  attention  to  an 
outside  end  obtained  as  a  result  of  experiment  and  experi- 
ence, our  empirical  powers.  In  a  way,  too,  this  something, 
that  we  have  termed  a  sense  of  conflict  that  needs  to  be 
ended,  is  imperative;  and  yet  it  is  not  necessarily  dictatorial. 
It  does  not  always  indicate  exactly  what  a  man  should  do, — 
the  form  of  action  through  which  he  should  manifest  his 


DESIRE  COMBINES  THOUGHT  AND  FEELING  113 

sense  of  obligation.  This  is  left  to  be  determined  by  cir- 
cumstances,— by  the  results  of  his  own  individual  thinking 
and  observing.  Whether,  in  considering  conscience,  one 
regard  its  primary  or  its  secondary  effects, — the  feeling  and 
thought  that  are  combined  constituents  of  the  desires,  or 
the  subsequent  feelings  and  thoughts  into  which  these 
desires  develop, — the  presumptive  inference  seems  to  be 
inevitable.  It  is  this, — that  what  we  term  conscience  is 
attributable  to  a  consciousness  that  the  desires  of  the  body 
and  of  the  mind  are  in  conflict. 

But  someone  may  ask:  Can  everything  that  men  mean  to 
designate  when  they  use  the  term  conscience  be  traced 
primarily  to  a  simple  experience  like  that  of  a  consciousness 
of  conflict  between  two  different  classes  of  desire?  Before 
answering  this  question,  it  may  be  best,  perhaps,  to  remind 
the  reader  that  the  experience  to  which  reference  is  here 
made  is  by  no  means  simple  in  the  sense  of  having  to  do 
with  agencies  insignificant  in  their  sources  or  effects.  It 
would  be  difficult,  if  not  impossible,  to  find  anything  in 
human  life  more  important  than  this  conflict  between  im- 
pulses that  come  from  the  body  and  from  the  mind:  and  if 
conscience  did  no  more  than  call  attention  to  the  existence 
of  the  conflict,  the  almost  superlative  rank  of  the  function 
thus  exercised  could  not  be  disputed.  Even  though  one 
did  not  have  the  testimony  of  consciousness  in  proof  of  the 
fact,  he  might  feel  sure  that  a  matter  of  such  grave  moment 
would  be  emphasized  by  nature  in  such  a  way  that  it 
would  be  impossible  to  overlook  it. 

It  may  be  asked  again  whether  this  conception  of  con- 
science is  sufficient  to  cover  all  the  requirements  of  the  sub- 
ject. Under  conscience  must  we  not  include  everything 
that  impresses  us  with  a  sense  of  obligation;  and  under  this, 
if  influenced  by  intelligence,  must  we  not  include  a  choice  of 
the  end  toward  which  effort  is  directed,  as  well  as  of  the 
means  which,  at  almost  every  stage  of  progress,  become 
themselves  subordinate  ends  that  must  be  chosen  in  order 
to  secure  the  attainment  of  the  principal  end? 

The  reader  will  recognize  that  these  three  questions  refer 
to  two  different  subjects, — the  same  which,  on  page  61  were 
stated  to  be  the  two  about  which  there  has  been  the  most 
divergence  in  ethical  opinion.  One  question  concerns  the 
source  of  obligation,  and  the  other  two  the  end  toward 
which    conformity   to   it   is    directed.     In    answering   the 


114  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

questions,  therefore,  it  will  be  well  to  separate  them.  First, 
then,  does  this  conception  of  conscience  cover  all  the 
requirements  of  it  considered  as  the  source  of  the  sense  of 
obligation  ? 

It  certainly  does.  In  the  first  place,  it  would  be  difficult 
to  find  anyone  who,  when  mentioning  particularly  his 
conscience,  is  not  in  his  own  mind  referring  to  an  agency 
that  he  feels  within  him, — an  agency  that  he  is  justified  in 
ascribing  to  the  sphere  of  desire,  inasmuch  as  the  feeling, 
though  it  may  be  stronger,  appears  to  be  exactly  the  same 
in  kind  as  that  which  he  experiences  in  the  case  of  any  desire 
or  aversion.  If  he  did  not  feel  this  agency,  he  might 
speak  of  some  other  form  of  obligation ;  but  he  would  seldom 
speak  of  conscience.  As  it  is,  a  very  small  child  recognizes 
the  agency,  and  knows  what  is  meant  when  his  attention 
is  directed  to  it.  It  is  not  philosophical  to  ignore  a  fact 
which  accords  with  the  testimony  of  the  consciousness  of 
almost  everyone  who  understands  exactly  what  that  is  to 
which  the  term  conscience,  thus  used,  is  intended  to  refer. 

In  the  second  place,  this  agency  of  that  which  is  thus 
termed  conscience  is  never  experienced  except  when  there  is 
a  consciousness  of  conflict  between  a  higher  and  a  lower 
desire, — higher  and  lower  respectively  meaning,  in  the  sense 
explained  on  page  6,  a  more  nearly  or  entirely  mental  and  a 
more  nearly  or  entirely  bodily  desire.  If  one  could  con- 
ceive of  a  person  who  never,  in  any  circumstances,  had 
had  experience  of  any  but  the  highest  desire,  he  could 
conceive  of  one  unable  to  understand  what  conscience  is. 
A  man,  all  whose  tendencies  prompt  him  to  honesty,  and 
who,  therefore,  is  never  conscious  of  those  prompting  him 
otherwise,  is  seldom,  so  far  as  regards  experience  with  refer- 
ence to  this  subject,  conscious  that  he  has  a  conscience.  A 
man,  who  on  the  whole  wishes  to  be  upright,  yet  whose 
desires  are  constantly  prompting  him  to  dishonesty,  seldom 
fails  to  feel  what  he  calls  his  conscience.  If  he  obey  it,  he 
frequently  deserves  great  credit  for  resisting  his  lower  tend- 
encies; but  he  needs  to  be  careful,  in  such  circumstances,  not 
to  pride  himself  too  much  upon  his  achievement.  It  may  be 
that  nothing,  except  considerations  like  those  of  the  danger 
of  being  detected,  prevents  him  from  theft.  A  boy  who  finds 
a  bicycle  in  front  of  his  father's  house  and,  without  asking 
any  questions,  begins  to  ride  it,  will  be  more  and  more 
conscious  of  his  conscience  the  farther  he  gets  away,  because, 


PERVERSIONS  OF  CONSCIENCE  115 

while  he  desires  to  ride,  he  also  desires  not  to  trespass  on  the 
possessions  or  the  rights  of  others.  But  if,  while  riding  it, 
he  happen  to  learn  that  it  was  left  in  front  of  the  house  as 
a  present  to  himself,  he  at  once  becomes  free  from  any 
consciousness  of  conscience  because  free  from  any  con- 
sciousness of  conflict  between  desires. 

Even  the  perversions  of  conscience  bear  analogous  testi- 
mony. These  perversions  are  traceable  sometimes  to  weak- 
ness of  intellect  or  of  will,  and,  sometimes,  to  wickedness. 
In  the  former  case,  when  a  man  is  conscious  of  this  conflict 
between  desires,  he  may  fail  to  end  it  by  coming  to  a  deci- 
sion in  favor  of  one  or  the  other.  He  may  treat  the  conflict 
as  if  it  were  not  something  to  which,  as  a  practical  man,  he 
ought  to  attend.  He  is  in  danger,  therefore,  of  allowing  the 
condition  to  continue  until,  little  by  little,  he  becomes  what 
people  term  morbidly  conscientious,  even,  sometimes,  insane. 
Every  time  two  desires,  however  unimportant,  conflict,  he 
associates  the  feeling  that  he  experiences  with  that  which  he 
has  felt  when  considering  a  question  concerning  right  and 
wrong ;  and  the  weakly  weighed  conclusions  that  he  reaches 
tend  little  toward  correct  views  of  either.  When  per- 
versions of  conscience  are  due  to  wickedness,  the  man  per- 
sistently disregards  the  conflict  of  which,  at  an  earlier 
stage,  he  was  forced  to  be  conscious.  As  a  consequence, 
after  a  time,  little  by  little,  he  becomes  accustomed  to  dis- 
regard it,  and  when  this  has  become  a  habit,  the  sense  of 
conflict  becomes  so  deadened  within  him  that  it  exerts 
no  influence.  He  gratifies  the  first  desire  that  comes  to 
him,  no  matter  what  may  be  its  source  or  character.  He 
may  cheat,  steal,  or  even  murder  with  no  more  compunction 
of  conscience  than  if  he  were  giving  milk  to  a  newborn  calf. 
This  deadening  of  conscience,  as  it  is  called,  is  sometimes 
ascribed,  by  those  who  hold  to  the  theory  that  it  is  a  cate- 
gorical imperative  in  the  sense  of  being  the  voice  of  God  in 
the  soul,  to  a  supernatural  and  arbitrary  punishment  for 
continued  sin.  It  may  be  and  probably  is  a  punishment ;  but 
the  theory  that  is  now  advocated  does  not  make  it  either 
supernatural  or  arbitrary,  but  merely  a  natural  result  such 
as  is  common  to  all  functions  either  of  body  or  mind  when 
they  are  not  kept  in  constant  service.  A  bedridden  man 
loses  the  ability  to  walk.  A  constantly  domineered  slave 
loses  the  ability  to  think  for  himself.  A  man  who  has,  for 
years,  allowed  the  conflict  between  desires  within  him  to. 


116  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

have  no  effect  upon  him  may  do  right  on  account  of  the 
presence  or  espionage  of  others  whom  he  fears  to  displease  or 
antagonize;  but  he  is  in  danger  of  getting  into  a  condition  in 
which  he  will  not  do  right  whenever  certain  that  he  is  alone 
— in  other  words,  of  his  own  initiative.  In  this  condition  he 
will  seldom  be  what  is  termed  a  man  of  honor. 

An  endeavor  has  been  made  to  show  that  conscience  is  a 
consciousness  in  the  sphere  of  desire;  and  that  it  is  a  con- 
sciousness of  conflict  there,  because,  when  the  conflict 
ceases,  the  consciousness  no  longer  exists.  Now,  let  us 
notice,  in  the  third  place,  that  this  conception  of  conscience 
follows  logically  upon  the  results  of  the  most  modern  think- 
ing with  reference  to  the  subject.  A  proof  of  this  may  be 
found  in  all  the  quotations  in  the  note  beginning  on  page  54. 
They  all  show  that  their  writers  recognize,  but  without 
carrying  their  recognition  to  its  logical  conclusion,  the  con- 
nection between  conscience,  or  the  sense  of  obligation,  and 
the  struggle  between  the  bodily  and  the  mental.  So  with 
the  term  self-realization.  As  explained  on  page  100,  self,  in 
this  term,  means  the  mental  or  rational  as  contrasted  with 
the  bodily  or  physical  self.  Notice,  too,  the  view,  more  or 
less  representative,  of  that  of  many  evolutionists,  which  is 
quoted  on  page  98,  from  Darwin's  Descent  of  Man.  Here, 
too,  the  struggle  suggested  is  between  the  bodily  and  the 
impulse  from  which  the  mental  is  supposed  to  evolve. 

Now,  having  considered  desires  in  conflict  as  the  source  of 
the  sense  of  obligation,  let  us,  in  accordance  with  what  was 
proposed  on  page  113,  consider  them  as  related  to  the  end 
toward  which  conformity  to  obligation  should  be  directed. 
The  first  thought  suggested  here  is  the  impossibility  of 
separating  the  quality  of  a  desire  from  that  of  the  end 
toward  which  it  is  directed.  A  desire  is  a  desire  for  some- 
thing. If  it  be  right,  in  the  circumstances,  for  one  to 
have  this,  then  the  desire  for  it  is  right;  otherwise  it  is  not. 
In  connection  with  this  thought  there  is  another  suggested 
by  the  particular  subject  with  which  we  are  now  dealing. 
The  theory  of  this  treatise  is  that  mental  influence  is  exerted 
through  activity  manifested  in  the  entire  range  of  mental 
possibility,  this  being  begun,  but  merely  begun,  in  the  mental 
desire  of  which  we  become  conscious  in  conscience!  This 
desire,  of  itself,  because  it  is  a  desire,  involves  in  embryo, 
according  to  what  was  said  on  page  6,  both  feeling  and 
thought,  and  because  it  is  mental,  it  involves,  according  to 


CONSCIENCE  AND  ACTIVITY  117 

what  was  said  on  page  20,  feeling  and  thought  that  are  both 
rational  and  non-selfish.  Therefore  the  end  to  which  the 
desire  prompts  must  involve  the  same.  Moreover,  as, 
according  to  what  was  said  on  page  12,  desire  is  the  primary 
influence  of  which  the  mind  is  conscious,  every  other  form  of 
activity  of  which  it  becomes  aware  must  be  considered 
secondary. 

The  fact  that  this  is  so  seems  to  have  been  vaguely, 
though  by  no  means  clearly,  recognized  very  often.  It 
apparently  explains  why  so  many  find  unsatisfactory  the 
ascribing  of  the  source  of  obligation  to  the  results  of  certain 
single  phases  of  mentality  such  as  are  represented  in  the 
teleological,  utilitarian,  or  hedonic  theories,  or  even  in  the 
institutional  or  intuitional  theories,  as  well  as  the  ascribing 
of  the  end  toward  which  the  fulfillment  of  obligation  should 
be  directed  to  the  attaining  of  certain  single  objects,  like 
personal  advantage,  the  greatest  happiness  for  the  greatest 
number,  universal  welfare,  love,  benevolence,  perfection,  or 
self-realization.  Not  one  of  these  theories  seems  to  their 
opposers  to  be  based  upon  a  conception  that  is  sufficiently 
fundamental.  Some  of  them  might  be  said  to  represent  no 
more  than  a  secondary  mental  result  developed  from  a  pri- 
mary mental  desire.  Unless  the  influence  of  the  latter  were 
present,  there  might  be  an  appearance  of  morality,  but  the 
spirit  needed  in  order  to  give  it  actual  life  would  be  absent. 

In  order  to  show  clearly  the  truth  of  this  statement,  let  us 
notice  the  effect  of  subordinating,  when  necessary,  bodily 
desire  to  mental  desire  upon  each  of  the  three  main  methods 
through  which  a  man  naturally  gives  expression  to  such 
tendencies  as  are  actuating  him.  These  methods  are  those 
of  activity  dominated  by  the  will,  of  intellection  dominated 
by  the  cognitive  faculties,  and  of  emotion  dominated  by 
what  may  be  termed  community-feeling. 

As  applied  to  activity,  everybody  admits  that,  as  stated 
on  page  197,  this  is  necessitated  often  in  order  to  fulfill 
mental  desire,  whereas  it  is  not  necessary  in  order  to  fulfill 
bodily  desire.  A  man  can  do  wrong  and  remain  indolent ;  but 
to  do  right,  as  a  rule,  necessitates  more  or  less  hard  work. 
Mental  desire  demands  exceptional  activity.  Of  itself,  it  can 
arouse  the  energism  (see  page  57)  that  is  needed  in  order 
to  obtain  working  results  from  other  departments  of  the 
mental  nature.  As  indicated  already  on  page  107,  these 
results  cannot  be  ascribed  to  any  sources  that  are  connected 


1 1 8  E THICS  A ND  NA  TURAL  LA  W 

with  mere  cognition.  However  greatly  they  might  develop 
one's  understanding,  sentiment,  or  judgment,  they  could  not 
prompt  to  action  unless  impelled  by  desire,  nor  to  mental 
action  unless  impelled  by  mental  desire.  And  if  mental 
desire  be  needed,  where  could  it  reveal  itself  more  clearly 
than  just  where  it  is  making  the  most  effort  to  subordinate 
bodily  desire;  i.  e.,  in  what  has  been  termed  conscience? 
Prompted  to  activity  by  this,  intuition,  or  any  other  form  of 
intellection,  may  exert  great  influence  upon  moral  character, 
but  it  seems  to  be  an  error  to  consider  this  influence  any 
other  than  secondary.  Without  the  struggle  of  mental 
desire  revealed  in  conscience,  it  might,  and  probably  would, 
be  merely  passive,  not  in  any  sense  active. 

As  applied  to  intellection,  it  is  difficult  to  conceive  of 
anything  that  could  so  stimulate  development  in  this  as  the 
consciousness  of  the  conflict  that  is  constantly  going  on 
between  that  which  is  lower  and  higher  in  one's  nature,  and 
the  serious  consequences  in  conception  and  conduct,  both 
to  oneself  and  to  others,  in  case  the  conflict  is  not  brought 
to  a  right  termination.  It  is  only  necessary  to  recall  that 
the  mental  includes  all  in  the  rational  nature  that  can  be 
distinguished  from  the  animal  nature,  in  order  to  recognize 
that  it  includes  every  result  not  only  of  rational  intui- 
tion but  of  all  other  rational  processes,  whether  influenced 
chiefly  by  hedonic,  eudaimonistic,  teleological,  or  utilitarian 
considerations.  The  conception  of  conscience  which  has 
been  presented  here,  although  apparently  depriving  it  of  an 
authority  which  it  is  questionable  whether  any  thorough 
examination  can  prove  it  to  have,  greatly  enhances  one's 
estimate  of  the  importance  and  extent  of  its  influence 
upon  the  whole  structure  of  character.  In  this  regard, 
the  conception  is  much  the  same  as  that  of  the  writers 
quoted  in  footnote s,  page  63.  Conscience  is  not  something 
that  has  to  do  with  a  part  of  a  man.  It  influences  the 
whole  of  him.  It  is  not  like  a  limb  that  can  be  ampu- 
tated, and  yet  leave  the  rest  of  the  body  as  sound  as  ever. 
One  would  suppose,  to  hear  some  people  talk,  that  human 
nature  is  a  creation  with  dissipation  below  and  religion 
above,  and  morality  half  way  between  the  two,  like  a  plant 
in  a  garden  with  dung  about  its  roots  and  hot  air  about  its 
fruit ;  or,  better,  because  of  a  lack  of  life,  like  the  image  in 
Nebuchadnezzar's  dream,  with  feet  of  clay  and  head  of  gold. 
The  truth  is,  however,  that  the  desire  of  the  mind  which  is 


CONSCIENCE  AND  COMMUNITY-FEELING  119 

the  cause  of  morality  lies  at  the  basis  of  everything  that  is 
right  in  rational  action.  Morality  is  that  for  the  produc- 
tion of  which,  so  far  as  one  can  judge  by  a  study  of  a 
man's  nature — even  without  borrowing  testimony  from  that 
which  is  termed  revelation — his  whole  human  constitution  is 
designed,  and  therefore,  as  we  may  suppose,  created.  Ac- 
cordingly, the  thinker  who  tells  us,  with  great  assump- 
tion of  being  able  to  distinguish  between  things  different, 
that  either  philosophy,  science,  or  art  has  nothing  to  do 
with  morality,  shows  that  he  has  a  false  conception  of 
it;  or  else  has  so  little  knowledge  of  the  workings  of  the 
human  organism  that  anything  that  he  may  have  to  say 
upon  the  subject  is  of  very  little  importance.  Unless  the 
leaders  in  these  respective  branches  were,  above  all  things, 
conscientious  in  their  investigations  and  explanations  of 
truth,  or  fact,  or  beauty,  it  would  be  impossible  for  the 
world  to  make  any  progress  worth  while.  No  department 
in  any  kind  of  endeavor  can  enlist  a  traitor  more  dangerous 
to  its  interests  than  is  an  unconscientious  workman. 

As  applied  to  community-feeling,  by  which  term,  as  used 
here,  is*  meant  the  psychical  union — the  unity  of  emotion, 
thought,  and  purpose  between  one  person  and  another  or 
others,  the  effect  upon  morality  of  subordinating  bodily  to 
mental  desire  is  still  more  marked  than  when  applied  to 
activity  and  intellection.  As  brought  out  on  page  20,  bodily 
desires,  as  a  rule,  seek  the  indulgence  of  bodily  sensations, 
and  necessitate  for  this  the  exclusive  possession  of  the  object 
of  desire.  It  is  impossible  for  one  to  eat  or  drink  exactly 
the  same  entity  that  another  is  eating  or  drinking.  On  the 
contrary,  mental  desires  perform  their  functions  in  the  per- 
ceptive organs  of  the  brain  that  obtain  what  they  wish  not 
from  their  own  sensations  but  from  what  these  sensations 
are  instrumental  in  enabling  one  to  see  or  hear.  Nor  does 
the  fulfilling  of  these  desires  necessitate  one's  own  possession 
of  the  object  of  sight  or  hearing.  Very  often,  as  when  listen- 
ing to  a  concert  or  observing  a  sunset,  anyone  else  may 
enjoy  it  to  the  full  at  the  same  time  with  oneself.  These 
conditions  give  a  man  a  realization  of  the  worth  of  things 
that  do  not  belong  to  himself,  or  if  they  be  his  own,  a  reali- 
zation of  the  pleasure  of  sharing  them  with  others.  It  will 
be  recognized,  therefore,  that  the  conception  of  conscience 
in  this  book  as  that  which  gives  one  a  consciousness  of  a 
conflict  between  bodily  and  mental  or  rational  desire,  which 


120  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

conflict  can  be  satisfactorily  ended  so  far  only  as  the  former 
is  made  to  harmonize  with  the  requirements  of  the  latter, 
necessarily  involves,  in  certain  circumstances,  the  con- 
ception of  the  subordination  of  that  which  pertains  merely 
to  self  to  that  which  pertains  to  another,  or  to  others  than 
self.  This  is  the  truth  underlying  all  those  theories  of  ethics 
that  are  based  upon  one's  relation  to  his  fellows.  It  per- 
vades institutionism  because  customs  and  laws  of  society  such 
as  are  embodied  in  institutions  are  merely  formal  expres- 
sions of  the  opinions  and  wishes  of  one's  neighbors  in  his 
own  country  or  in  other  countries.  The  same  conception 
underlies  those  systems  also  in  which  the  end  of  morality 
is  represented  to  be  the  expression  of  love,  benevolence, 
universal  welfare,  or  that  which  obtains  the  greatest  good  for 
the  greatest  number.  The  conception  is  equally  evident 
among  those  who  emphasize  in  morality  what  is  termed 
spirituality — as  in  many  of  the  quotations  in  the  note  begun 
on  page  54  and,  in  the  peculiar  form  of  it,  expressed  by  T.  H. 
Green,  which  is  criticised  on  page  101 .  There  is  an  important 
truth  brought  out  in  all  these  theories — but  it  is  not  the 
whole  truth,  and  for  this  reason  considered  practically, 
each  is  deficient.  Exclusive  institutionism,  because  of  its 
tendency  to  extreme  conservatism,  may  prevent  the  effects 
of  initiative  and  independence.  Exclusive  altruism,  because 
of  its  tendency  to  yield  all  to  others,  may  prevent  the  effects 
of  personality  and  leadership;  and  exclusive  spirituality, 
because  of  its  tendency  to  mysticism  and  asceticism,  may  pre- 
vent the  effects  of  social  reformation  and  civic  betterment. 
For  the  same  reason,  the  theories  fail,  when  considered 
philosophically.  Each  of  them  emphasizes  exclusively  only 
a  part  of  that  which  should  be  emphasized  as  a  whole; 
and  which,  if  emphasized  thus,  would  necessarily  in- 
volve the  part.  On  pages  20-22  it  is  shown  that  what  is 
termed  the  mental  or  rational  necessarily  includes  all  that 
nonselfish  and  nonegoistic  consideration  of  others  and  of 
their  opinions,  wishes,  and  welfare  which  constitutes  the  dis- 
tinguishing characteristic  of  these  theories.  Of  them,  as  of 
those  that  emphasize  particularly  the  need  of  activity  and 
intellection  in  one  who  would  conform  to  the  requirements 
of  morality,  it  may  be  said  that  they  add  nothing  to  that 
which  may  be  included  in  the  conception  that  has  been  pre- 
sented in  this  volume.  Moreover,  when,  in  Chapters  XIIL 
to  XXIII.,  we  come  to  consider  the  practical  bearings  of  this 


HOW  CONSCIENCE  INFLUENCES  THE  MIND  121 

conception  upon  the  conduct  of  life  as  manifested  in  court- 
ship, marriage,  the  family,  school,  society,  business,  indus- 
try, and  various  forms  and  methods  of  government,  we 
shall  find  the  differences  between  right  and  wrong  sug- 
gested in  each  case  with  a  logical  inevitableness  which,  as 
the  author  believes,  cannot  be  paralleled  by  the  results 
attained  through  an  application  of  any  of  these  other 
theories. 

To  sum  up  in  a  few  sentences  that  which  has  been  unfolded 
in  the  present  chapter,  it  has  been  shown  that  the  primary 
source  of  obligation  is  conscience;  and  that  conscience  is  a 
mental  consciousness  making  one  aware,  sometimes  very 
gently  and  sometimes  very  emphatically,  that  bodily  desire 
is  interfering  with,  or — to  use  the  phraseology  already 
employed — is  in  conflict  with  mental  desire,  and  preventing 
its  fulfillment.  This  mental  consciousness  can  not  but  have 
an  effect  upon  mental  action,  and  the  primary  end  to  be 
attained  by  this  action  is  to  cause  this  inward  interference 
or  conflict  to  cease.  Such  a  result  follows  when  mental 
desire  is  reinforced  by  mental  action  of  any  kind  to  such  an 
extent  as  to  keep  bodily  desire  subordinated  to  it.  This 
conclusion  follows  in  accordance  with  what  has  been  said, 
not  only  in  this  chapter  but  in  Chapter  III.,  namely,  that 
mental  desire  underlies  and  may  involve  every  possibility 
of  the  mental  nature,  whether  volitional,  intellectual,  or 
emotional.  The  result,  therefore,  of  the  sense  of  obligation 
of  which  one  becomes  aware  in  conscience,  influences  the 
mind  not  primarily  but  ultimately  in  exact  analogy  with  the 
way  in  which  any  other  experience  may  influence  it,  whether 
coming  from  joy  or  sorrow,  natural  cause  or  accident,  fire, 
flood,  or  war.  A  man  will  do  morally  right,  however  far 
from  the  absolute  right  his  own  ignorance  or  inexperience 
may  lead  him,  in  the  exact  degree  in  which  his  own  mind,  as 
a  whole,  working  in  accordance  with  all  or  any  of  its  own 
possibilities,  succeeds,  in  case  of  conflict  with  bodily  tenden- 
cies, in  outweighing  them  through  the  influence  of  that 
which  is  naturally  and  necessarily  associated  with  its  own 
higher  tendencies. 

Certain  of  the  readers  of  this  volume  may  consider  this 
theory  identical  with  that  of  intuitionism  or  emotionalism, 
or,  at  least,  of  emotional  intuitionism,  or  moral  sense  (see 
page  91) ;  But  this  the  author  cannot  concede.  It  seems  to 
him  that  the  theory  presented  in  this  volume  differs  from 


122  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

these  theories  and  from  any  of  the  others  mentioned  in  this 
Chapter  in  at  least  one  characteristic.  This  is  its  endeavor 
to  explain  all  moral  activities — though  not  the  decisions — 
of  the  mind,  whether  exercised  by  way  of  instinct,  intuition, 
reasoning  observation  or  calculation,  by  tracing  them  to  a 
single  conditioning  source  that  is  easily  perceived  and  is 
constantly  operative.  According  to  what  has  been  said, 
morality  cannot  be  occasioned  or  developed  by  thinking 
alone,  nor  by  feeling  alone.  It  needs  the  cooperation,  in 
every  slightest  detail,  of  these  two  processes  of  mind  when 
acting  conjointly.  This  condition,  however  partly  acknowl- 
edged, is  not  recognized  as  indispensable  in  any  theories 
based  exclusively  upon  the  effects  of  institutions,  fitness, 
reason,  intuition,  or  instinct,  whether  acting  according  to 
teleological,  utilitarian,  eudaimonian,  or  hedonic  methods; 
but  it  evidently  cannot  fail  to  exert  a  practical  influence 
wherever  morality  is  attributed  to  effects  wrought  among 
the  desires.  This  is  the  case  because  every  desire  arises 
from  a  combination  of  thought  and  feeling  (see  pages  6,  7,  8, 
37,  and  38) ;  and  all  desires,  taken  together,  underlie  every 
possible  development  of  either  of  these  two  factors  of  men- 
tal activity  (see  Chapter  III.). 


CHAPTER  X 

DESIRES  OF  THE  MIND  SHOULD  NOT  SUPPRESS,  BUT  SUB- 
ORDINATE, DESIRES  OF  THE  BODY 

The  Difficulty  of  Understanding  or  Applying  the  Principles  Unfolded  in 
the  Preceding  Chapters — Two  Possible  Methods  of  Doing  this — 
The  Method  of  Suppressing  Physical  Desires,  or  Asceticism — 
Asceticism  Wrong  in  Theory — Gratifying  Physical  Desire  is  Right — 
Asceticism  Detrimental  in  Practice — Unnecessary  as  a  Preventive 
of  Evil — Illustrations — Easy  Solutions  of  Moral  Problems  not  the 
most  Satisfactory — Modern  Efforts  to  Create  Right  Opinions  on 
this  Subject — Bodily  Desire  should  be  Kept  Subordinate — Impor- 
tance of  Mental  Desire — But  not  to  be  Indulged  to  the  Exclusion  of 
Bodily  Desire — The  Greek  Conception  of  Moderation — Neither 
Bodily  nor  Mental  Desire  Expressive  of  all  of  Nature's  Demands. 
— When  these  Demands  are  not  Fulfilled,  any  Desire  may  Become 
Overreaching — Overreaching  Desires  Tend  to  Irrationality  and 
Selfishness — Even  though  Primarily  Mental — In  Beings  both 
Bodily  and  Mental,  the  Desire  of  the  One  Needs  to  be  Balanced 
against  that  of  the  Other — Balance  as  an  Agency  in  Keeping  Up- 
right— Complexity  of  the  Problem  of  Morality — The  Problem 
Solved  by  Mental  Action  that  is  both  Immediate  and  Delibera- 
tive— Adaptation  to  this  Purpose  of  the  Principle  Underlying 
what  is  Termed  Ethical  Harmony. 

IT  has  been  shown  in  the  preceding  chapters,  that  all  of 
the  activities  of  the  mind  in  willing  and  thinking  begin 
in  the  desires,  and  partake  of  the  quality,  whether 
bodily  or  mental,  of  the  desire  with  which  they  start;  and 
also  that  nature  by  making  man  the  only  being  in  the  world 
with  a  high  mental  development,  seems  to  have  indicated 
that,  in  cases  where  these  two  classes  of  desires  in  him  come 
into  conflict,  the  bodily  needs  in  some  way  to  be  subordi- 
nated to  the  mental.  On  first  consideration,  it  might  be 
thought  a  simple  thing  for  one  to  bring  about  this  result. 
But  it  is  not.  The  bodily  is  often  so  blended  in  conscious- 
ness with  the  mental  that  one's  understanding  has  difficulty 
in  distinguishing  between  the  two;  and,  even  when  they  can 

123 


124  E  THICS  A  ND  NA  T  URAL  LA  W 

be  differentiated  very  clearly,  he  cannot  always  apply  to  a 
complicated  condition  a  principle  that  can  be  readily  applied 
to  an  elementary  one.  Because  we  experience  no  hesitation 
in  attributing  to  the  body  the  feeling  caused  by  a  blow  on 
the  head  or  an  ache  in  the  stomach,  it  does  not  follow  that 
we  can  decide  just  as  readily  to  what  we  should  attribute 
the  feeling  caused  by  a  slap  on  the  cheek  or  a  pang  in  the 
heart;  and,  of  course,  there  are  thousands  of  cases  involving 
double  relationships  the  unravelling  of  which  would  be 
almost  a  thousand  times  more  perplexing  than  of  these. 
The  conditions  therefore  evidently  demand  further  con- 
sideration than  has  yet  been  given  them.  Let  us  continue 
the  subject  in  our  present  chapter. 

What  we  wish  to  ascertain  is  the  method  through  which 
when  it  is  necessary  to  subordinate  the  bodily  to  the  mental, 
this  result  can  be  produced; — not  only,  too,  in  simple  but 
in  complicated  cases.  Every  one  will  probably  recognize 
without  argument  that  there  can  be  only  two  ways  of  accom- 
plishing such  a  result, — either  one  of  the  two  desires  or  sets 
of  desires  that  are  in  conflict  must  be  suppressed  while  the 
other  is  allowed  expression;  or  the  two  by  some  means  must 
both  be  allowed  expression  but  in  such  ways  as  to  be  made 
to  work  together. 

Let  us  begin  by  noticing  the  former  method;  and,  first,  as 
applied  to  bodily  desires.  These  are  traceable,  as  we  have 
found,  to  the  lower  part  of  a  man's  nature,  and  are  mani- 
fested in  results  involving  physical  indulgence  and  more 
or  less  thoughtlessness  or  selfishness.  It  is  only  natural, 
therefore,  that  many  should  hold  the  theory  that  the  best 
thing  to  be  done  with  them  is  to  suppress  them.  Not  only 
individuals,  but  whole  communities  in  certain  places  and 
ages  have  adopted  this  theory  and  tried  to  carry  it  into 
practice.  The  theory  underlies  every  system  of  asceticism. 
There  are  thousands  in  India  to-day  who  are  called  "holy" 
not  only  by  themselves  but  by  others  because  they  go 
around  without  clothing  or  food  except  as  they  can  beg 
these  from  their  neighbors.  All  through  Europe  "during  the 
Middle  Ages  there  were  thousands,  perhaps  hundreds  of 
thousands,  of  Christian  monks  and  nuns  who  were  given 
to  fasting  and  to  scourging  themselves;  and  who  were 
almost  as  much  of  a  nuisance  and  burden  to  the  community 
as  are  these  holy  men  of  India.  Even  in  cases  where 
asceticism  has  not  been  adopted  in  whole,  it  has  beer. 


ASCETICISM  125 

adopted  in  part,  as  by  the  Greek  and  Roman  Stoics,  the 
medieval  celebates  and  the  Renaissance  Puritans.  In 
many  of  our  churches  to-day  there  are  people  who  have  a 
subtle  feeling,  which  they  cannot  explain,  but  of  which  they 
apparently  cannot  rid  themselves,  that  any  gratification  of 
bodily  desire  is  wrong. 

But  is  this  true?  Is  the  belief  justified  by  the  conditions 
that  we  find  in  the  world?  It  certainly  is  not.  Every 
sane  interpretation  of  these  conditions  proves  that  the 
physical  desires  were  not  meant  to  be  suppressed.  They 
were  meant  to  be  gratified.  Otherwise,  the  lessons  that  we 
can  derive  from  our  own  nature  were  intended  to  be  men- 
dacious. Other  reasons,  too,  point  in  the  same  direction. 
It  is  because  men  gratify  their  desires  to  eat  and  drink  and 
propagate,  that  they  have  health  and  strength  and  off- 
spring; nor,  when  these  desires  have  passed  from  primary 
to  secondary  conditions,  when  the  elementary  consciousnes 
of  self  may  have  developed  into  a  tendency  at  least  to 
selfishness,  are  they  meant  to  be  wholly  suppressed.  A  cer- 
tain degree  of  self-love  is  necessary  if  one  would  do  or  be 
anything  in  the  world  that  is  of  high  value.  Without  it  a 
man  will  have  little  of  that  ambition,  enterprise,  and  dili- 
gence that  enable  one  to  arrive  at  the  head  of  the  workshop, 
warehouse,  courthouse,  statehouse,  college,  or  church;  and 
few  would  cause  their  friends  to  feel  gratitude  or  pride  in 
view  of  their  achievements  or  careers.  Business,  society, 
education,  philanthropy,  religion,  and  government  need 
leaders  and  where  would  be  the  leaders  without  those 
possessed  of  personality  strong  enough  to  push  them  to 
the  front?  When  the  Great  Master  of  Nazareth  de- 
nounced the  scribes,  pharisees,  and  hypocrites  of  Judea,  and 
scourged  the  money  changers  and  drove  them  out  of  the 
temple,  he  showed  himself  to  have  been  swayed  by  desire 
physical  enough  to  express  itself  forcibly  through  both 
language  and  limb.     (Jno.  2;   13-16.) 

We  may  conclude,  therefore,  that  the  gratification  of 
bodily  desire  is  not  in  itself  wrong.  But  we  can  go  further 
than  this.  We  can  say  that  it  is  often  right,  because  it  can 
be  used  as  an  agency  to  increase  the  strength  and  extend 
the  influence  of  mental  desire.  To  think  otherwise  would 
involve  disregarding  some  of  the  clearest  teachings  of  experi- 
ence. The  mental  and  the  bodily  are  not  brought  together 
in  a  man  without  some  purpose.     The  way  in  which  the 


126  E  THICS  AND  NAT  URAL  LA  W 

former  seems  to  be  disciplined  and  developed  by  constant 
contact  with  the  latter  affords  for  some  the  strongest  possi- 
ble argument  in  favor  of  a  personal  rational  existence  in  a 
life  beyond  the  present.  How  can  a  man  logically  believe 
in  his  right  to  separate  the  influence  of  the  two  unless  he 
believes  in  his  right  to  commit  suicide?  He  might  as  wisely 
slaughter  a  pair  of  useful  horses  because  they  needed  con- 
stantly to  be  controlled  as,  for  a  similar  reason,  to  suppress 
his  far  more  useful  bodily  desires. 

If  this  be  true,  it  is  no  wonder  that  extreme  asceticism 
has  always  been  joined  to  methods  of  thought  and  action 
that  have  been  detrimental  to  the  community  in  which  it 
has  been  found.  It  has  always  been  accompanied  by  a 
great  distrust  in  the  inherent  instincts  of  human  nature; 
and  a  disposition  to  oppose  even  the  innocent  tendencies  of 
these  with  extreme  violence  which  has  been  a  fruitful  source 
of  cruelty  and  persecution.  Even  where  opposition  has 
stopped  short  of  these,  the  theory  underlying  asceticism  has, 
of  itself,  caused  a  great  deal  of  depression  and  distress, 
especially  among  the  young.  Some  of  them,  if  honest,  have 
been  driven  into  skepticism  or  infidelity,  and  some,  if  dis- 
honest, into  pretense  or  hypocracy.  Such  results  have 
been  occasioned  by  their  recognizing  that  it  is  impossible  for 
them  to  live  up  to  the  standards  prescribed  by  the  com- 
munity or  by  the  church  in  which  they  find  themselves. 
They  want  to  eat,  drink,  and  be  merry  in  a  great  many 
different  ways  which  someone  declares  to  be  wrong.  These 
may  be  wrong.  A  great  many  things  in  the  world  are  so; 
but  then  again  the  particular  phases  of  these  that  such 
people  desire  may  be  right,  and  may  seem  wrong  merely 
because  the  standard  by  which  they  are  judged  was  never 
warranted  by  nature  or  meant  to  be  attained  by  a  natural 
man. 

The  most  remarkable  thing  about  asceticism  is  that, 
with  all  the  discomfort  that  it  brings  to  those  who  practice 
it,  and  with  all  the  evils  that  accompany  its  effects  upon 
others,  it  can  be  so  easily  proved  to  be  unnecessary.  Bodily 
indulgence  can  be  subordinated  without  suppressing  bodily 
desires ;  and,  perhaps,  more  readily  than  if  attempts  be  made 
to  suppress  these.  There  have  been  innumerable  cases 
illustrating  this  fact.  For  instance,  take  the  changes  that 
have  been  wrought  in  customs  of  society  that  once  almost 
necessitated  very  gross  forms  of  gluttony  and  drunkenness. 


BODILY  MAY  INCREASE  MENTAL  GRATIFICATION  12? 

In  the  early  ages  of  all  nations — as  among  savages  of  our 
own  time — whoever  went  to  a  feast  was  expected  to  treat 
himself  very  much  as  does  a  hibernating  bear  trying  to  take 
in  at  one  time  enough  to  last  him  for  a  whole  winter.  The 
man  stuffed  himself  with  food  and  got  drunk  to  his  utmost 
possibility.  Even  in  England,  three  hundred  years  ago, 
one  could  not  everywhere  prove  himself  an  appreciative 
guest  unless  he  came  prepared  to  spend  the  last  of  the  night 
on  the  floor  under  the  table.  Why  is  it  not  so  in  our  own 
time?  What  has  changed  these  old  customs?  One  influ- 
ence certainly — and  many  would  consider  it  the  most 
important — has  been  the  discovery  made  by  people  that,  in 
connection  with  bodily  desires,  mental  desires  can  also 
be  indulged;  and,  besides  this,  that  the  latter,  if  associated 
with  the  former  but,  at  the  same  time,  given  priority,  can 
afford  a  degree  even  of  physical  gratification  far  more  com- 
plete and  satisfactory,  as  well  as  more  worthy  of  manhood. 
These  mental  desires  lead  to  what  is  termed  good  taste 
manifested  both  in  the  seasoning  of  the  food  and  in  its 
aesthetic  setting,  as  shown  in  the  linen,  the  porcelain,  the 
silver,  the  service,  the  flowers,  the  company,  the  dressing, 
the  gentlemen,  the  ladies.  In  a  modern  banquet,  the  appeal 
through  the  eye  and  ear,  to  the  mental  nature,  while  it  joins 
with  the  appeal  to  the  mere  bodily  nature,  so  overbalances 
the  latter  that  hardly  one  person  out  of  a  score  would  have 
it  suggested  to  him  to  think — much  less  to  say — that  he 
was  in  the  presence  only  of  "food"  or  "feeders."  Of 
course,  the  glutton  or  the  drunkard  sometimes  makes  his 
appearance  amid  such  surroundings;  but  few  fail  to  recog- 
nize that  he  is  out  of  place  there.  Of  course,  too,  there  are 
tendencies  to  luxury  and  to  other  forms  of  self-indulgence  in 
modern  banquets  that  need  to  be  corrected  through  a  more 
extensive  development  of  the  influence  of  higher  desire. 
But  the  difference  between  them  and  the  orgies  of  the 
savage  is  sufficiently  well  marked  to  illustrate  the  principle 
involved. 

The  same  could  be  illustrated,  too,  from  many  improve- 
ments that  have  taken  place  in  other  social  directions.  It 
is  to  higher  desires  which  have  not  suppressed  but  have 
subordinated  lower  desires  that  we  owe  almost  all  the  condi- 
tions which  we  term,  by  way  of  distinction,  those  of  civili- 
zation,— not  only  the  polite  but  the  kindly  courtesies  of 
ordinary  intercourse,   the  agreeable  cleanliness   and  the 


128  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

attractive  surroundings  of  homes  and  schools,  the  public 
games,  concerts,  pageants,  and  other  entertainments  that 
afford  recreation  to  exhausted  energy,  the  literary  and  social 
gatherings,  and  the  institutions  of  marriage,  and  of  the 
church  so  far  as  the  latter  appropriates  the  influence  of 
beauty  in  ritual,  music,  or  architecture.  Not  one  of  these 
results  would  have  been  possible  if,  in  the  Middle  Ages,  the 
world  had  been  led  to  accept  and  to  try  to  realize  the  ideal 
of  the  ascetic  monk  with  his  empty  stomach,  his  starved 
face,  his  foul  clothing,  or  his  unwashed  body. 

It  seems  a  simple  and  easy  solution  of  moral  problems  to 
say,  in  case  an  action  tends  to  the  wrong,  "Suppress  it  alto- 
gether." But  a  solution  may  not  be  satisfactory  for  the 
very  reason  that  it  is  simple  and  easy.  Many  a  problem  in 
geometry  could  be  solved  by  drawing  a  line  across  a  figure, 
as  guided  by  the  eye  alone.  But,  if  so  solved,  the  object  of 
presenting  the  problem  would  not  be  attained.  So  with 
moral  problems.  To  suppress  all  actions  tending  to  the 
wrong,  would  involve  suppressing  about  all  that  there  is  in 
one's  entire  bodily  nature.  What  bodily  desire  is  there 
that,  when  indulged  in  to  excess,  does  not  necessitate  doing 
wrong?  There  is  also  another  and  a  stronger  objection  to 
this  method, — it  would  suppress  about  the  best  agency  that 
it  is  possible  to  employ  for  the  development  of  the  mental 
nature.  And  to  secure  the  development  of  this  is,  if  any- 
thing, the  primary  object  of  human  existence.  If  all  men 
could  learn  to  act  rationally  and  humanely — in  other  words, 
mentally — in  view  of  every  emergency,  the  end  of  existence 
would  probably  be  obtained.  But  how  could  men  ever 
learn  this,  in  a  world  from  which  every  opportunity  for 
exercising  and  strengthening  the  power  of  mental  control 
were  eliminated  ?  The  elements  of  all  our  nature,  bodily  as 
well  as  mental,  are  means  to  ends;  and  in  order  to  attain 
these  ends,  we  need  to  feel  the  presence  and  influence  of 
every  one  of  the  means.  Why  do  so  many  of  the  followers 
of  the  Great  Master  of  Galilee  fail  to  recognize  that,  aside 
from  circumstances  attending  the  conditions  of  his  age, 
there  may  have  been  a  profound  reason  founded  on  the 
requirements  of  human  nature,  why  he  came,  as  he  said, 
"eating  and  drinking"  (Luke  7:  34)  and,  when  he  "went 
about  doing  good"  (Acts  10:  38),  so  associated  himself 
with  all  classes  of  people,  in  all  their  occupations  and  recre- 
ations, that  it  was  possible  for  some  to  term  him  "a  man 


MODERN  SECULARIZING  OF  RELIGION  12$ 

gluttonous  and  a  wine-bibber,  a  friend  of  publicans  and 
sinners?"  (Matt,  n :  19).  How  better  could  he  have  em- 
phasized that  which  was  the  most  important  of  the  les- 
sons that  he  had  come  to  teach,  namely, — that  the  quality 
of  life  on  earth  is  determined  not  necessarily  by  particular 
actions,  but  by  the  general  spirit  actuating  them;  by  one's 
being  in  the  world,  and  yet  not  being  of  the  world  (John  17 : 
14-16);  by  his  using  and  enjoying  the  use  of  his  bodily 
nature,  and  yet  never  forgetting  that  it  is  always  to  be  con- 
sidered an  agency  through  which  primarily  to  express  the 
desires  and  designs  of  the  mental  nature  ? 

It  is  because  of  an  endeavor  to  counteract  mistaken,  and 
what  are  recognized  to  be  injurious  effects  of  wrong  con- 
ceptions with  reference  to  this  subject  that  we  owe  what 
appears  to  be  the  most  prevalent  tendency  among  the  moral 
and  religious  reformers  of  our  own  times.  It  started  with 
what  was  formerly  termed  "muscular  Christianity," empha- 
sizing the  religious  effect  of  having  a  vigorous  body ;  and  it 
has  been  continued  in  movements  like  those  of  the  Salvation 
Army  and  Volunteers,  reinforced  by  revivalists  in  almost 
every  sect  who  have  presented  the  most  solemn  appeals  for 
betterment  with  a  levity  of  phraseology  and  a  lack  of  dignity 
in  bearing  which,  a  few  years  ago,  would,  in  themselves, 
have  been  considered  almost  sure  proofs  of  immorality 
to  say  nothing  of  irreligion.  To-day,  in  our  country,  this 
conception  has  been  changed.  Without  being  able  to  for- 
mulate a  reason  for  their  thought,  the  majority  of  good 
people  seem  to  have  come  to  recognize  that  giving  full 
credit  to  the  mental,  whether  considered  as  the  mindful  or 
the  soulful,  does  not  necessitate  doing  discredit  to  the 
bodily;  that  geniality  of  spirit  can,  perhaps,  be  satis- 
factorily expressed  in  a  silent  smile,  yet  giving  vent  to  a  loud 
laugh  that  shakes  the  ribs,  is  no  sin;  that  there  may  be  an 
incongruity  between  our  conception  of  a  minister  and  of  a 
mountebank,  yet  where  it  is  necessary  to  emphasize  the 
importance  of  having  a  cheerful  spirit,  even  the  latter  may 
have  his  uses ;  that  a  man  is  not  necessarily  any  farther  from 
the  kingdom  than  from  the  creation  of  God,  because  he  may 
happen  to  be  watching  the  antics  of  a  monkey.  A  more 
sane  and  intellectual  endeavor  to  counteract  the  emphasiz- 
ing of  the  mental  by  the  suppression  of  the  bodily  is  mani- 
fested in  organizations  like  the  Young  Men's  or  Women's 
Christian  or  Hebrew  Associations,  the  Knights  of  Columbus, 


130  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

and  various  other  societies  which,  as  if  to  advertise  their 
emancipation  from  exclusive  spirituality,  are  officered  by 
laymen  rather  than  by  clergymen.  To  recognize  that 
the  conflict  between  bodily  and  mental  desire  can  be  made 
to  cease,  without  unduly  suppressing  either,  is  to  find  a 
sound  philosophical  basis  for  the  general  conception  that 
underlies  all  these  movements  and  organizations.  They  are 
intended  to  remind  people  of  the  fact  that  in  the  conduct  of 
life,  the  bodily  as  well  as  the  mental  has  a  part  to  play  that 
must  not  be  disregarded. 

But  while  giving  heed  to  this  bodily  tendency  of  desire, 
it  is  important  not  to  place  it  above  the  mental.  Many 
seem  inclined  to  do  this.  There  are  families  in  which  the 
selfishness  of  the  small  boy  is  welcomed  as,  of  itself,  a  har- 
binger of  success  in  life ;  and  there  are  many  more  families  in 
which  the  selfishness  of  a  parent  manifested  in  unsym- 
pathetic dictatorial  meanness  is  hailed  as  a  guarantee 
that  he  is  giving  the  kind  of  discipline  fitted  to  train  his 
children  to  right  habits  of  submission  and  obedience  to 
authority.  It  is  the  methods  partaking  of  selfishness  that, 
perhaps,  more  frequently  than  others,  are  taken  to  be 
indicative  of  worldly  wisdom.  Very  often,  in  effect,  though, 
of  course,  not  in  unequivocal  language,  one  seems  to  be 
asked  why  a  man  should  not  practice  deception  with  refer- 
ence to  his  own  achievements  or  position,  if,  by  doing  so, 
he  can  enhance  his  influence  ?  It  is  said  that  the  results  of  his 
doing  this  are  good  even  upon  people  who  discover  that  he 
has  misrepresented;  that  it  trains  them  not  to  be  dupes. 
It  is  asked  why  a  man  should  not  cheat,  if,  by  doing  so,  he 
can  make  more  money  in  his  business?  It  is  said  that,  in 
this  way,  he  can  train  even  those  whom  he  defrauds  to  be 
financially  cautious.  It  is  asked  why  he  should  not  deal 
harshly  with  his  employees,  and  refuse  to  give  them  a  living 
wage,  if,  by  doing  this,  he  can  add  to  his  own  profits?  It  is 
said  that,  in  this  way,  he  trains  men  to  efficiency  and  econ- 
omy. It  is  asked  why  he  should  not  profess  to  believe  what 
he  does  not  believe,  and  become  a  member  of  a  popular 
church,  if,  by  doing  so,  he  can  make  himself  popular?  It  is 
said  that  in  this  way  he  will  do  good  by  casting  all  his 
influence  upon  what  most  people  suppose  to  be  the  right 
side.  It  is  asked  why  he  should  not  refuse  to  acknowledge 
acquaintance  with  the  poor  or  uninfluential,  if,  by  doing  so, 
he  can  convey  the  impression  that  he  himself  associates 


THE  MENTAL  NOT  TO  BE  SOUGHT  EXCLUSIVELY     I3I 

exclusively  with  the  rich  and  the  powerful  ?  It  is  said  that 
in  this  way  he  can  exalt  the  social  standing  of  his  wife  and 
daughters,  and  increase  the  attention  given  them.  So  one 
could  continue  and  mention  an  almost  innumerable  num- 
ber of  wrong  things  that  are  not  usually  treated  as  wrong, 
in  ordinary  intercourse,  business,  employment,  or  church 
fellowship.  Why  are  they  not  treated  as  wrong? — Because 
so  many  people  have  become  accustomed  to  see  some  neigh- 
bor fulfilling  the  promptings  of  desires  that  are  egoistic, 
deceptive,  dishonest,  stingy,  hypocritical,  mean,  and,  in 
short,  unconscionably  selfish  that  no  one's  manifestation  of 
these  traits  awakens  in  them  sufficient  surprise  to  lead 
them  to  endeavor  to  oppose  him,  even  though  their  own 
consciences  would  render  it  virtually  impossible  for  them 
to  follow  his  example. 

As  for  mental  desires,  probably  no  right-minded,  not  to 
say  sane  man,  would  seriously  argue  that,  when  they  conflict 
with  bodily  desire,  they  should  be  suppressed.  From  the 
beginning  to  the  end  of  life  almost  everyone  is  aware  that  he 
is  in  need  of  making  a  mental  use  of  the  information  and 
suggestions  that  come  to  him  through  the  eye  and  ear.  And 
when  one  considers  not  the  primary  but  the  secondary 
effects  of  influences  exerted  upon  the  mental  nature,  as 
exhibited  in  every  form  of  unselfish  devotion  to  the  welfare 
of  another,  the  need  that  humanity  has  of  them  becomes,  if 
anything,  still  more  apparent.  The  world  would  never 
have  become  more  than  half  civilized,  had  it  not  been  for 
the  self-denying  labors  wholly  divorced  from  even  the  sug- 
gestion of  working  for  personal  advantage  manifested  by 
scientific  investigators,  indefatigable  physicians,  poorly  paid 
theologians,  and  enthusiastic  artists  and  musicians  without 
number  so  engaged  in  the  pursuit  of  truth,  philanthropy,  or 
beauty  as  to  ignore  not  only  indulgence  in  bodily  appetite 
or  comfort  but  even  in  the  most  ordinary  joys  of  companion- 
ship and  appreciation.  We  can  scarcely  conceive  of  any- 
thing that  would  more  threaten  all  that  is  of  real  value  in  life 
than  a  theory  that  would  tend  to  suppress  these  higher 
desires. 

At  the  same  time,  just  as  in  the  case  of  the  bodily,  the 
mental  desires  must  not  be  the  only  ones  to  be  indulged. 
Nothing  is  more  detrimental  to  body  or  soul  than  the 
influence,  either  upon  oneself  or  others,  of  an  intellect  so 
absorbed  in  what  are  believed  to  be  higher  pursuits,  as  to 


132  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

forget  that  one  himself  or  others  about  him  need  to  be  pro- 
vided with  bodily  comfort  such  as  is  furnished  by  food, 
clothing,  and  shelter.  The  slatternly  slip-shod  household  of 
the  impecunious  scholar,  the  self-conscious  affrighted  looks 
of  the  flock  of  the  unsympathetic  puritan  parent,  the  odor 
of  sanctity  literally  surrounding  the  ascetics  who  make 
it  a  rule  never  to  be  tempted  into  the  bodily  self-indul- 
gence involved  in  cleaning  oneself  or  his  raiment,  are  not 
conducive  of  the  highest  attainments  of  either  ethics  or 
civilization. 

We  may  conclude,  therefore,  that  the  right  method  of 
ending  the  conflict  between  bodily  and  mental  desire  does 
not  involve  the  suppressing  of  either.  What  then  does  it 
involve?  How  can  the  proposed  end  be  attained?  The 
ancient  Greeks  used  to  emphasize  the  ethical  importance  of 
regulating  conduct  by  what  they  termed  "moderation." 
This,  it  was  thought,  if  applied  to  such  indulgences  as  have 
here  been  attributed  to  the  promptings  of  bodily  desire,  would 
prevent  excess;  and  that  excess  alone  involved  immorality. 
None  of  this,  it  was  pointed  out,  was  manifested  in  moder- 
ate drinking  of  wine  or  feasting  at  a  banquet.  Only  in 
cases  of  immoderate  indulgence,  when  a  man  showed  himself 
to  be  a  drunkard  or  a  glutton,  could  he  be  termed  immoral. 
This  principle  of  moderation  was  rational  and  satisfactory, 
so  far  as  it  went;  but  a  moment's  thought  will  reveal  that  it 
was  not  sufficiently  fundamental.  It  could  apply  to  such 
indulgences  only  as  were  not  in  themselves  wrong,  but 
could  become  wrong  on  account  of  methods  adopted  in 
giving  expression  to  them.  Eating,  for  instance,  is  not 
wrong  in  itself,  but  it  may  become  wrong  when  it  is  over- 
done. The  same,  however,  cannot  be  said  of  many  other 
actions,  like  those  involving  falsehood,  theft,  and  certain 
forms  of  vice.  It  would  not  end  the  evil  of  a  man's  ways  to 
make  him  merely  a  moderate  liar,  thief,  or  adulterer.  But 
if  we  say  that,  when  tempted  to  do  the  contrary,  a  man  should 
keep  the  mental  and  rational  uppermost,  we  announce  a 
principle  that  can  be  applied  to  all  cases.  It  applies  to 
drunkenness  and  gluttony  because  these  make  a  man  too 
senseless  or  stupid  to  exercise  mentality  either  of  thought 
or  feeling;  and  it  applies  to  falsehood,  theft,  and  vice  be- 
cause these  are,  in  all  cases,  opposed  to  such  forms  of 
mentality  as  are  influenced  by  truth  that  is  universal,  and 
tend  toward  action  that  is  nonselfish. 


WHY  MEN  HA  VE  DIFFERING  DESIRES  133 

It  seemed  well  to  mention  this  ancient  Greek  conception 
because  it  might  naturally  suggest  itself  here  to  some  reader 
acquainted  with  the  subject.  But  what  has  been  said  has 
not  answered  the  question  asked  at  the  opening  of  the  last 
paragraph.  It  has  not  explained  how  the  end  of  keeping 
the  mental  uppermost,  when  this  seems  necessary,  can  be 
attained.  At  most  it  has  shown  merely  that  it  cannot 
invariably  be  attained  by  moderation.  But  this  statement 
is  negative.  Let  us  try  to  find  something  positive.  The 
condition  presented  is  that  of  two  conflicting  agencies:  and 
the  question  to  be  solved  is  how  can  the  two  be  made  to  act 
together  in  harmony.  Before  trying  to  answer  this  ques- 
tion, let  us  examine  more  carefully  than  has  been  done  the 
influence,  as  related  to  the  general  effect,  of  each  of  the 
agencies  in  circumstances  in  which  only  one  of  them  is  act- 
ing. In  such  a  case  all  will  acknowledge  that  neither  class  of 
desires,  whether  bodily  or  mental,  is  expressive  of  more  than 
a  part  of  that  which  a  man's  nature  demands.  Neither  can 
represent  fully  both  his  physical  and  his  rational  needs,  and 
so  long  as  he  possesses  both  a  body  and  a  mind,  the  needs  of 
neither  can  be  rightly  neglected.  The  fulfillment  of  only 
one  desire,  or  one  class  of  desires,  can  never  bring  that  which 
can  satisfy  his  whole  being.  This  is  true  as  applied  to 
one's  consciousness  either  of  pleasure  received  or  of  duty 
performed.  By  neglecting  a  part  of  that  over  which  his  per- 
sonality has  been  given  control,  he  has  both  missed  an 
opportunity  for  enjoyment  and  has  committed  what  re- 
ligious people  term  a  "sin  of  omission."  As  manifested 
in  such  a  case,  too,  this  latter  seems  certain  to  involve 
also  a  "sin  of  commission."  It  seems  to  be  a  law  of 
human  life  that  one  who  starts  Out  to  fulfill  the  desire 
of  no  more  than  a  single  part  of  his  complex  nature, 
will  continue  to  seek  for  the  satisfaction  that  he  has 
failed  to  get,  not  by  turning  to  another  desire,  but  by 
continuing  to  indulge,  and  so  to  overindulge,  the  one 
that  has  already  proved  itself  unable  to  do  that  which 
was  expected  of  it. 

This  over-indulgence  is  characteristic  of  a  large  number 
of  men.  Apparently,  however,  it  is  never  characteristic 
of  the  lower  animals.  It  is  difficult  to  induce  a  dog  or  a 
horse  to  eat  or  to  drink  after  he  has  once  appeased  his  hun- 
ger or  thirst.  Only  a  man,  after  he  has  had  enough,  still 
tries  to  take  in  more.     In  order  to  enable  him  to  do  this,  he 


134  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

tickles  and  irritates,  and  often  permanently  diseases  his 
organs.  He  spices  and  sugars  his  food,  and  becomes  a 
glutton;  he  brews  and  distills  his  beverage,  and  becomes  a 
drunkard;  he  abuses  and  wastes  his  powers  of  generation 
and  becomes  an  imbecile;  he  smokes  and  dopes  narcotics 
and  opiates,  and  becomes  a  dullard;  he  violates  the  laws  of 
labor,  rest,  or  recreation,  and  becomes  a  thief,  a  vagabond,  or 
a  gambler.  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson  speaks  of  men  having 
oversouls.  There  is  no  doubt  about  their  often  having 
over — or  perhaps  what  might  better  be  termed  overreaching 
■ — desires ;  and  it  is  safe  to  say  that  whenever  one  is  allowing 
these  to  determine  his  course,  he  is  doing  what  the  majority 
of  people  consider  to  be  clearly  wrong.  Men  dispute  about 
the  right  or  wrong  of  many  actions,  but  when  it  comes  to 
gluttony,  drunkenness,  debauchery,  theft,  vagabondage, 
and  fraud,  they  cease  to  dispute.  With  reference  to  the 
nature  of  these,  they  are  in  substantial  agreement. 

Nor  is  the  influence  of  overreaching  desires  manifested 
in  merely  the  primary  form  of  self-indulgence  which  is 
experienced  in  appetite.  It  is  manifested  in  the  secondary 
forms  of  irrationality  and  selfishess.  Of  the  seven  capital 
sins,  selected  for  special  mention  by  the  old  Catholic  theo- 
logians, only  one  could  be  considered  merely  bodily.  This 
was  gluttony.  The  others — excessive  pride,  luxury,  wrath, 
idleness,  avarice,  and  envy — were  as  much  allied  to  mere 
irrational  selfishness  as  to  appetite.  It  is  right  enough  for 
a  man  to  have  sufficient  consciousness  of  self,  with  its  various 
demands,  and  possibilities,  to  make  him  prudent,  diligent, 
economical,  enterprising,  ambitious,  and  pushing,  but  his 
whole  attitude  of  mind  becomes  wrong  when  the  desires 
underlying  these  become  overreaching.  Then  they  make 
him  cowardly,  crafty,  miserly,  scheming,  treacherous,  and 
mean  in  other  ways  too  numerous  to  mention. 

Mental  desire,  too,  may  become  overreaching,  making 
its  own  the  bodily  methods  of  activity  normally  fitted 
to  serve  only  bodily  desire.  In  this  case,  mental  desire 
may  become  abnormally  and  immorally  subordinated 
to  bodily  tendencies.  No  man  more  dangerous  to  the 
welfare  of  society  exists  than  the  scientist,  philosopher, 
or  artist,  whether  painter,  poet,  dramatist,  or  novelist, 
who  has  indulged  so  selfishly  in  what  might  be  termed 
the  pure  wine  of  thought  as  to  become  intoxicated 
by  it  in  such  a  sense  as  to  remain    numb    to    every 


OVERREACHING  DESIRES  1 35 

other  consideration.  And  nothing  is  more  common  among 
men,  and  wrong,  than  to  excuse  one  of  this  sort,  some- 
times for  following  self-exploiting  and  impractical  theories 
so  far  as  to  advocate  principles  underlying  economic 
and  political  changes  likely  to  disorganize  and  destroy 
conditions  necessary  to  the  peace  and  prosperity  of  the 
community ;  and  sometimes  for  ignoring  such  merely  bodily, 
in  the  sense  of  material,  matters  as  paying  one's  debts, 
providing  food  and  shelter  for  those  dependent  on  one, 
avoiding  excessive  attentions  to  other  men's  wives,  or,  under 
the  excuse  of  manifesting  the  eccentricities  of  genius,  dis- 
regarding those  conventionalities  of  society  that  are  essen- 
tial, if  for  nothing  else,  to  avoid  setting  a  demoralizing 
example.  Even  in  religion,  in  a  direction  in  which  one 
might  suppose  that  no  desires  could  be  overreaching,  we  find 
the  same  tendency.  All  of  us  know  some — and  in  certain 
periods  of  history  they  have  included  many — religious  people 
in  whom  the  desire  to  pray,  to  attend  church,  and  to  par- 
take of  the  sacraments  has  been  so  overreaching  as  to  crowd 
out  every  other  conception  of  spiritual  obligation.  Louis 
the  Fourteenth  of  France,  at  the  very  time  when  he  was 
living  what  could  be  termed  a  grossly  immoral  life,  was 
attending  three  religious  services,  including  one  mass, 
every  morning  of  the  week.  It  is  remarkable  how  many 
people  who  seem  to  have  an  almost  fanatical  desire  to  have 
somebody  preach  to  them,  absolve  them  from  sin,  or, 
through  supposed  spiritual  agency,  cure  them  of  disease,  are 
wholly  indifferent  to  a  large  number  of  things  for  the  cor- 
rection of  which,  and  for  little  else,  a  philosophical  mind  is 
apt  to  think  that  religion  has  value.  Even  some  of  those 
who  tell  us  that,  through  reading  the  Scriptures,  medita- 
tion, prayer,  and  other  such  means,  they  have  reached  a 
higher  life  of  religious  ecstasy  full  of  comfort  and  conso- 
lation to  themselves,  now  and  then  show  such  utter  disre- 
gard not  only  of  the  material  wishes  and  welfare,  but  of  the 
spiritual  development  and  uplift,  of  those  surrounding  them, 
that  the  only  way  in  which  the  man  most  willing  to  ac- 
knowledge their  piety  could  truthfully  designate  them 
would  be  to  term  them  "spiritual  misers."  Human  desires, 
as  we  have  found,  have  a  constant  tendency  to  be  over- 
reaching, to  crave  satisfaction  beyond  that  for  which  they 
are  intended. 

What  has  been  said  will  reveal  to  us  the  cause  of  this.     It 


136  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

is  owing  to  a  lack  of  comprehensive  conscientiousness,  or 
consciousness  of  that  which  is  due  to  every  factor  of  human 
possibility.  The  very  condition  that  has  been  noticed  so 
frequently  in  these  pages  as  existing  in  a  man's  nature — a 
condition  in  which  bodily  and  mental  desires  are  both  in 
constant  operation — necessitates  a  comprehensive  outlook. 
Otherwise,  when  two  desires,  or  sets  of  desires,  are  in  con- 
flict, both  cannot  receive  attention.  When  they  do  receive 
this,  the  principle  in  accordance  with  which  both  influence 
the  mind  is  that  of  balance  or  counterbalance.  All  of  us  are 
more  or  less  acquainted  with  the  effects  of  this  principle  and 
have  been  accustomed  to  hear  it  attributed  to  the  results  of 
intelligent  action.  Few  of  us  can  think  of  higher  praise 
that  can  be  given  to  a  man's  judgment  than  to  term  him 
"well  balanced"  or  "level  headed."  These  terms  recog- 
nize the  importance  of  one's  being  influenced,  whether 
morally  or  not,  from  more  than  one  side.  They  are  never 
applied  to  a  man  accustomed  to  allow  his  passions,  his 
impulses,  or  his  whims  to  upset  him ;  never  to  one  who  ex- 
hibits petulance,  precipitance,  or  sentimentality,  or  is  a 
slave  to  prejudice,  fanaticism,  or  bigotry. 

In  ethics,  inasmuch  as  the  primary  source  of  conduct, 
either  right  or  wrong,  is  in  the  desires,  it  is  among  these 
that  we  must  first  look  for  the  factors  that  balance  one 
another.  If  a  boy,  because  he  has  a  sympathetic  nature, 
join  a  gang,  and  engage  with  its  members  in  drinking, 
gambling,  or  stealing,  what  he  most  needs  is  to  be  led  to 
associate  with  others  who  do  differently,  and  will  lead  him 
to  desire  to  do  differently.  If  a  man,  because  he  has  an 
intellectual  nature,  live  alone  among  his  books,  ignoring 
every  prompting  to  unselfish  sympathy  and  helpfulness  for 
others,  what  he  needs  most  is  to  be  drawn  into  society 
where,  perhaps,  he  maj^  begin  to  desire  friends  and,  possibly, 
a  family  of  his  own.  Recall,  too,  that  always  included  with 
the  desire  are  all  the  possibilities  of  feeling  or  thinking,  into 
which  the  desire  may  develop.  This  means  that,  if  a  man 
desire  bodily  indulgence,  then  bodily  selfishness  or  irration- 
ality may  characterize  any  of  his  brain's  activities,  i.e.,  of 
his  inferences,  plans,  imaginings,  or  choices;  and  one  of  these 
may  be  counterbalanced  not  only  by  a  mental  desire,  but 
by  some  inference,  plan,  imagining,  or  choice  into  which  men- 
tal desire  has  developed.  A  man  whose  bodily  indolence 
or  intemperance  has  brought  privation  and  shame  to  his 


BALANCE  AS  A  MENTAL  CHARACTERISTIC  I37 

family  and  friends  may  be  entirely  reformed,  therefore,  by 
argument  and  facts  appealing  not  directly  to  his  mental 
desires,  but  to  some  intellectual  or  emotional  development 
of  them, — in  other  words,  by  an  endeavor  either  to  quicken 
his  perception  of  mental  truth  in  the  abstract,  to  outline 
mental  ideals  for  his  imagination,  or  to  impress  upon  him  a 
recognition  of  mental  responsibility  to  and  for  others. 

Balance  will  be  recognized  to  be  not  an  end  itself,  but  a 
means  used  for  the  purpose  of  attaining  an  end, — a  method 
through  which  the  will  accomplishes  the  purpose  of  mental 
desire.  It  is  through  balance  applied  to  his  physical  frame 
that  a  man,  in  walking,  keeps  his  head  uppermost  and  his 
form  erect.  Sometimes  the  balancing  factors  are  very  simi- 
lar in  appearance  and  importance.  This  is  the  case  with  a 
man's  two  arms  or  two  legs  that  balance  when  he  is  walking. 
But,  even  when  doing  this,  he  is  applying  the  principle  of 
balance  to  his  head  and  shoulders  which  differ  greatly  from 
the  lower  limbs  whose  effects  these  counteract;  and  this 
possibility  of  balance  between  things  dissimilar  is  still  more 
evident  when  one  is  dancing  on  a  tight  rope  or  exhibiting 
agility  in  athletics.  The  rule  is  that  the  more  apparently 
unlike  the  balancing  factors  are,  the  more  skill  does  it 
require  to  manage  them  successfully.  Skill,  as  most  of  us 
know,  is  always  the  result  of  a  thoughtful  exercise  of  will- 
power. The  reader  will  recognize  that  this  is  also  what 
is  needed  in  order  to  secure  morality.  Just  as  a  man,  by 
applying  the  principle  of  balance,  can  cause  his  body  to 
stand  straight  and  to  keep  his  head  uppermost,  so,  by 
applying  an  analogous  principle  to  his  moral  nature,  he  can 
maintain  his  uprightness  and  make  all  its  possibilities  sub- 
ordinate to  that  which  is  mental. 

Now  comes  an  important  practical  question.  It  is  this, 
— how  can  this  result  be  accomplished?  When  one  con- 
siders the  innumerable  activities,  all  involving  minute 
differences  in  the  aims  and  ends  of  emotions,  thoughts,  and 
deeds,  between  which,  in  case  morality  is  to  be  manifested 
in  the  whole  character,  mutual  counteraction  is  needful,  the 
problem  seems  too  complex  to  render  it  feasible  or  possible 
to  carry  out  the  principle  just  explained.  How,  in  every 
one  of,  perhaps,  a  hundred  cases,  can  a  man  find  time — 
to  say  no  more — to  judge  of  the  moral  quality  of  one  course 
of  action,  or,  as  is  often  necessary,  of  two  counterbalancing 
courses?     And,  after  he  has  made  a  choice  between  the  two, 


I38  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

what  shall  be  said  of  the  feasibility  not  of  adopting  one  and 
rejecting  the  other,  which  would  be  a  comparatively  easy 
thing  to  do — a  thing  done  by  every  ignorant  fanatic  or  fren- 
zied mob  that  the  world  ever  saw — but  of  adopting  both,  yet 
keeping  the  expression  of  the  one  in  all  cases  where  it  will 
rightly  adjust  itself  to  the  other  ?  At  first  thought  it  seems 
as  if  the  requirements  of  the  situation  would  demand  the 
calculating  powers  of  an  Archimedes  and  the  wisdom  of  a 
Solomon.  Indeed,  it  is  not  difficult  to  find  able  books  in 
which  the  practical  solution  of  such  problems  is  declared 
impossible.  "Altruism  and  egoism,"  says  Prof.  A.  E.  Tay- 
ler  (1869-),  of  St.  Andrews  University,  in  Chapter  IV.  of 
The  Problem  of  Conduct,  ' '  are  divergent  developments  from 
the  common  psychological  root  of  primitive  ethical  senti- 
ment." The  reader  will  notice  that,  in  making  this  state- 
ment, the  writer  has  not  recognized,  as  has  been  done  in  this 
book,  that  the  egoistic  develops  from  lower,  not  higher 
desire;  and  that  many  daily  acts  of  conscience  involve  the 
subordination  of  the  promptings  of  the  former  to  those 
of  the  latter.  Had  he  recognized  this,  his  conclusions  that 
follow  might  have  been  less  pessimistic.  He  goes  on  to  say, 
"Both  developments  are  alike  unavoidable,  and  each  is 
ultimately  irreconcilable  with  the  other.  Neither  egoism 
nor  altruism  can  be  made  the  sole  basis  of  moral  theory 
without  mutilation  of  the  facts. "  This  latter  is  exactly  what 
has  been  maintained  in  this  book;  and  it  will  suggest  to  the 
reader  why  a  theory  such  as  the  book  presents  seems  to  be 
needed.  The  author  of  the  Problem  of  Conduct  goes  on  to 
say,  "  Nor  can  any  higher  category  be  discovered  by  the  aid 
of  which  their  rival  aims  may  be  finally  adjusted."  The 
answer  to  a  statement  like  this  is  that  their  claims  can 
be  adjusted  by  the  action  of  personal  will  influenced  by 
rational  desire  and  doing  its  best  to  increase  the  strength  of 
rational  desire  which,  naturally,  and,  in  those  well  trained, 
inevitably,  whenever  it  conflicts  with  bodily  desire,  appeals 
to  consciousness  as  the  more  important  of  the  two. 

Now  let  us  return  to  that  from  which  this  criticism 
diverted  us, — the  difficulty  of  coming  to  right  conclusions 
where  great  complexity  characterizes  the  motives  and  ends 
appealing  to  one.  Of  course,  the  important  matter  here  is 
to  simplify  things  as  much  as  possible;  and,  as  a  rule,  the 
best  way  of  doing  this  is  to  get  down  deep  enough  into  a 
subject  to  come  into  contact,  if  possible,  with  that  which 


IMMEDIATE  AND  DELIBERATIVE  MENTAL  ACTIVITY    139 

underlies  all  its  influences  and  determines  all  its  applications. 
Even  when  dealing  with  merely  the  intellectual  relationships 
of  a  subject,  this  course  is  frequently  almost  essential.  One 
of  the  best  of  the  books  on  elocution,  consulted  by  the 
author,  when  he  was  preparing  his  Orator's  Manual,  con- 
tained almost  a  score  of  different  rules  for  determining  the 
use  of  the  upward  as  distinguished  from  the  downward  in- 
flection. Of  course,  such  a  number  of  rules  could  be  of 
no  practical  availability  to  a  pupil  who  had  to  decide  upon 
an  inflection  the  moment  that  he  came  upon  it  in  rapid  read- 
ing. What  was  needed  was  a  single  principle  underlying  each 
and  all  of  the  rules,  which  principle  could  be  recognized  and 
applied  immediately  as  a  result  of  his  first  thought,  though, 
at  the  same  time,  capable  of  being  examined,  explained,  and 
made  more  lucid,  as  a  result  of  a  process  of  thinking. 
It  was  the  recognition  on  the  part  of  the  Master  of  Galilee 
of  this  need,  and  his  ability  to  state  such  principles,  as  in 
"Do  unto  others  as  ye  would  that  they  should  do  unto  you," 
"It  is  more  blessed  to  give  than  to  receive,"  "Thou  shalt 
love  thy  neighbor  as  thyself,"  and  "He  that  is  faithful  in 
that  which  is  least,  is  faithful  also  in  much,  "  that  gave  him 
his  place  not  only  as  a  great  spiritual  but  a  great  intellectual 
leader.  As  suggested  through  these  quotations,  this  method 
of  imparting  truth  is  especially  effective  when  one  is  called 
upon  to  influence  not  merely  another's  opinions  but  his 
conduct.  When  a  question  of  morals  presents  itself  for 
immediate  solution,  a  man  often  has  no  time  to  argue  with 
reference  to  the  consequences.  However  true  the  ' '  teleolog- 
ical,"  the  "utilitarian,"  the  " eudaimonian, "  the  "greatest 
happiness,"  or  other  theories  may  be,  they  fail  in  such 
circumstances  to  meet  the  emergency.  They  are  not,  as  we 
say,  practical.  They  involve  too  much  delay.  Let  us 
turn  then,  some  may  say,  to  the  instinctive  or  the  intuitive 
theory, — to  something  presupposing  immediate  action.  But 
this  again  would  not  meet  the  conditions.  An  ethical 
system  must  include  a  consideration  not  only  of  that  which 
can  prompt  to  right  in  an  emergency  but  can  prove  what 
is  right  in  an  argument.  The  short  statements  just  quoted 
were  fitted  not  only  for  immediate  recognition,  but  they 
have  furnished  texts  for  millions  of  extended  discourses. 
This  is  the  same  as  to  say  that  such  statements  were  fitted 
to  appeal  to  the  action  of  the  mind  preceding  the  processes 
of  reasoning,  and  also  to  its  action  accompanying  and  fol- 


140  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

lowing  these  processes.  The  same  must  be  true  of  the 
successful  appeal  to  the  mind  of  any  ethical  influences. 

Now  let  us  notice  how  perfectly  both  these  requirements, 
as  applied  to  conflicting  desires  within  the  mind,  can  be 
fulfilled  by  using  th  e  method  which,  when  applied  analogously 
in  material  relationships,  is  termed  balance.  What  is  it  that 
causes  a  man  to  balance  the  different  muscles  and  limbs  of 
his  physical  body  sufficiently  to  enable  him  to  stand  straight 
and  walk?  How,  as  a  child,  did  he  learn  to  do  this? — In- 
stinctively, not  so?  Nobody  explained  the  processes  to 
him.  Without,  as  we  say,  understanding  what  he  did,  he 
felt  his  way  to  the  results.  But,  when  he  grew  older,  and 
wanted  to  carry  this  method  of  balance  to  what  we  may 
term  artistic  perfection,  what  did  he  do  ?  He  experimented 
by  himself,  and  learned  from  others.  He  became  an  expert, 
not  as  a  result  of  instinctive  or  spontaneous  feeling  alone, 
but  of  processes  also  of  observing,  reasoning  and,  in  short, 
thinking. 

Can  this  analogy  between  learning  to  balance  factors 
that  are  physical  and  to  balance  one  factor  that  is  physical 
by  another  that  is  psychical  hold  good  when  we  come  to  ex- 
amine more  minute  and  complex  developments  of  our 
subject?  An  answer  to  this  question  will  be  given  in  the 
chapter  following.  In  it  an  endeavor  will  be  made  to  show 
that,  in  contrast  to  the  consciousness  of  conflict  between 
higher  and  lower  desires  which  has  been  attributed  to  what 
is  termed  conscience,  it  is  natural  and  logical  that  a  man 
should,  at  times,  experience  a  consciousness  also  of  an 
absence  of  conflict.  This  consciousness,  analogous  to  the 
undisturbable  poise  of  an  athlete  when  all  the  conflicting 
sources  of  energy  in  his  body  are  in  perfect  balance,  will  be 
attributed  to  what  will  be  termed  ethical  harmony:  and  the 
correspondence  between  the  method  exemplified  in  it  and 
in  aesthetic  harmony  will  be  indicated,  as  well  as  the  reasons 
why,  in  each  department,  the  results,  in  viewT  of  the  under- 
lying requirements,  can  be  considered  natural  and  logical. 


CHAPTER  XI 


ANALOGIES    BETWEEN    HARMONY   IN   .ESTHETICS   AND 
IN   ETHICS 


The  Term  Harmony  is  often  Applied  to  Moral  Conditions — Sim- 
ilarity of  the  Influences  Tending  to  ^Esthetic  and  to  Ethical 
Harmony — Explanation  of  Arrangements  Producing  Esthetic  Har- 
mony— Art  Composition,  Beauty,  and  Moral  Character  all  Con- 
nected with  Subordinating  the  Bodily  or  Material  to  the  Mental  or 
Rational — This  Produces,  First,  an  Effect  of  Order — Other  Effects 
thus  Produced — Other  Analogies — Embodiment  of  Ideals — Har- 
mony is  Produced  by  Arrangement,  not  Suppression — It  Affects 
Sensation  aside  from  the  Understanding — Can  be  Recognized  by 
Ordinary  Human  Intelligence — By  Natural  Inference— Studying 
the  Subject  Increases  Ability  to  Apply  it — Its  Principles  Applicable 
to  Courses  of  Action  as  well  as  to  Specific  Acts — Effects  of  Ethical 
Harmony  between  Desires,  as  of  ^Esthetic  Harmony  between 
Methods,  Produced  by  Influences  Essentially  Non-selfish — The 
Results  of  Ethical  Harmony  Conform  to  every  Requirement  of 
Sociology  and  Religion  as  well  as  of  Rationality. 


THAT  there  is  a  close  analogy  between  aesthetic  har- 
mony and  the  condition  of  the  mind  in  which  higher 
and  lower  desires  have  been  made  to  work  in  unison, 
is  a  conception  that  has  been  frequently  expressed  by 
writers  upon  ethics.  Plato,  for  instance,  suggests  it  in  the 
Fourth  Book  of  The  Republic,  where  he  speaks  of  the  tem- 
perate man  "in  whom  the  lower  and  higher  souls  are  in 
harmony."  _  George  Combe  (1788-1858)  of  Edinburgh 
University,  in  Section  I,  of  his  Moral  Philosophy ,  says:  "I 
consider  the  virtue  of  an  action  to  consist  in  its  being  in 
harmony  with  the  dictates  of  all  the  faculties  acting  in 
harmony  and  duly  enlightened."  Professor  John  Aber- 
crombie  (1 780-1 844)  in  Part  III.,  Sec.  2,  of  The  Philosophy 
of  Moral  Feeling,  refers  to  "the  harmony  or  principle  of 
arrangement  which  various  classes  of  emotion  ought  to  bear 

141 


142  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

toward  one  another,"  and,  most  clearly  and  satisfactorily 
of  all,  Professor  Frank  Thilly  (1865-)  in  Chapter  IX.  of  his 
Introduction  to  Ethics  declares  that  "the  end  is  the  develop- 
ment of  body  and  mind  in  harmony  with  each  other,  the 
unfolding  of  all  powers  and  capacities  of  the  soul,  cognitive, 
emotional,  and  volitional,  in  adaptation  to  both  physical 
and  psychical  requirements."  Let  us,  in  this  chapter,  con- 
sider a  little  more  fully  than  seems  yet  to  have  been  done 
some  of  the  philosophical  and  practical  bearings  of  this 
conception. 

Harmony  is  a  term  usually  applied  to  certain  effects 
of  arrangement.  This  arrangement  is  sometimes  found 
in  nature, — occasionally  in  sounds,  but  more  often  in 
sights,  as  in  the  groupings  of  outlines  or  colors  in  flowers, 
trees,  valleys,  or  mountains;  or,  as  in  the  symmetrical 
proportions  or  balance  of  features  in  the  frames  or  faces 
of  men  or  animals.  As  a  rule,  however,  harmony  is  not  an 
effect  produced  by  nature  but  by  man,  who  rearranges  that 
which  he  hears  or  sees  in  accordance  with  principles  which 
he  has  developed  and  formulated  in  what  is  termed  art.  Art 
is  a  distinctly  human  product, — a  result  of  human  as  distin- 
guished from  animal  intelligence.  To  say  this  is  the  same, 
according  to  what  has  been  hitherto  unfolded  in  this  volume, 
as  to  say  that  art  is  a  result  of  the  thoughtful  action  that  dis- 
tinguishes a  man  from  an  animal.  It  is  this  action,  rearrang- 
ing physical  or  bodily  appearances — i.e.,  the  sights  and 
sounds  of  nature — that  changes  their  effects  of  confusion 
and  discord  into  those  of  order  and  harmony.  An  exactly 
similar  influence  of  the  thoughtful  upon  the  bodily  occasions 
morality.  This  is  an  effect  produced  by  the  non-physical 
in  mind  upon  one's  own  physical  body  (including  his  brain), 
or  upon  both  the  mental  and  the  physical  combined  that 
exist  in  the  bodies  (including  the  brains)  of  others.     See  p.  4. 

In  the  author's  Genesis  of  Art- Form  there  is  a  chart  which 
will  be  found  reproduced  on  page  143.  This  chart  was 
originally  prepared  that  it  might  show  the  ways  in  which  the 
earliest  conceptions  of  the  mind,  intent  upon  expressing  a 
thought  in  an  external  sound  or  sight  taken  from  physical 
nature,  pass  through  successive  stages  until  they  have 
manifested  every  phase  of  artistic  embodiment,  ending  in 
what  is  termed  harmony  of  tone  and  color.  Of  course,  all 
the  chart's  applications  to  art-composition  cannot  be  under- 
stood by  the  reader  unless  he  has  made  a  special  study 


FACTORS  OF  ESTHETIC  HARMONY  143 


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144  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

of  it;   but  the  general  principles  involved  are  very  easily- 
grasped. 

The  chart  will  show  us  that  art-composition  begins  with 
an  effort18  to  continue  the  life  and  influence  of  a  thought, 
which,  when  started  in  the  mind,  is  unseen  and  unheard, 
by  expressing  it  in  a  visible  or  audible  material  form.  All 
expression  on  the  part  of  a  human  being — even  that  which 
represents  what  is  moral  in  conduct — is  an  effort  in  a 
similar  direction.  This  effort  begins,  as  indicated  in  the 
chart  with  the  mind,  and  has  to  do  throughout  with  the 
effects  of  the  mind  upon  matter.  What  the  mind  wants  to 
do  is  to  give  outward  expressions  in  sounds  or  sights  of  such 
a  nature  that  its  thought  will  appear  clear  and  intelligible 
to  others  owing  to  its  singleness  and  simplicity;  important 
and  convincing  to  them  owing  to  its  insistence  and  reitera- 
tion; and,  in  case  it  be  artistic,  attractive  and  beautiful  to 
them  owing  to  the  form  with  which  imagination  and  imita- 
tion can  cause  it  to  be  represented  and  embodied.  The 
first  aim  of  the  mind,  as  indicated  in  the  chart,  is  to  find 
some  one  thing  in  material  nature  representing  one  thought, 
— a  stone,  for  instance,  representing  hardness,  or,  contrasted 

18  The  difficulty  in  accomplishing  the  object  of  the  effort,  so  far  as  this 
is  expended  upon  art,  arises  from  the  fact  that  the  laws  and  conditions 
controlling  the  associations  and  sequences  of  thoughts  in  the  mind  are 
different  from  those  controlling  the  associations  and  sequences  of  things 
in  external  nature.  Because  one  thought — if  we  can  imagine  one  thought 
as  existing  by  itself — can  be  represented  adequately  and  easily  by  one 
thing — i.e.,  by  one  word,  act,  or  object — it  will  not  do  to  infer  that  the 
same  can  be  said  of  many  associated  and  consecutive  thoughts.  In 
external  nature,  things  are  often  side  by  side  or  follow  one  another,  while 
yet  only  one  of  them  bears  any  relation  to  the  thought  that  is  in  the 
mind.  This  is  one  reason  why  an  effect  of  variety  is  universally  attrib- 
uted to  nature.  If  a  relationship  of  thought  between  adjacent  or 
consecutive  sounds  or  sights  could  always  be  perceived,  variety  would 
not  be  so  much  in  evidence.  As  it  is,  nature  seems  characterized  by  it; 
and  the  thinker,  whether  he  wish  to  understand  and  explain  it  as  a 
scientist,  or  to  imitate  and  use  it  for  the  purposes  of  expression  as  a 
painter  or  a  musician,  recognizes  in  it  more  or  less  confusion  and  dis- 
order. He  reccgnizes,  too,  that,  as  in  the  case  of  a  disorderly  writing 
desk  or  room,  the  remedy  is  to  sort  the  different  objects,  and,  putting 
together  things  that  are  alike,  arrange  them  so  that  they  shall  have  an 
orderly  effect.  A  painter  may  mentally  put  together  living  creatures 
that  are  alike,  and  term  them  birds  or  beasts,  doves  or  dogs.  A  musi- 
cian may  put  together  sounds  of  the  same  pitch,  and  term  them  A  or  B, 
or  Do  or  Re,  and  so  on.  From  the  beginnings  of  order  thus  produced  by 
an  exercise  of  comparison,  art  goes  on  to  develop  the  methods  mentioned 
in  the  chart. 


FACTORS  OF  .ESTHETIC  HARMONY  145 

with  it,  a  sponge  representing  softness.  Then,  to  express 
the  thought  without  the  possibility  of  misrepresentation, 
the  mind  needs  to  illustrate  it  by  getting  together  more 
things  like  stones  or  sponges.  In  other  words,  the  first  aim 
of  the  mind,  in  accomplishing  its  work  of  expression,  is  to 
find  certain  things  in  nature  that,  as  indicated  in  the  chart, 
produce  unity  of  effect.  If  these  things  can  be  found,  then 
one  mind  can  make  another  mind  understand  what  is  meant 
by  hardness  or  softness.  Unfortunately,  however,  the  first 
characteristic  of  matter  that  confronts  the  mind  is — not 
unity — but  variety.  Notice  the  indication  of  this  fact  in 
the  chart,  and  also  that,  from  this  point  onward,  the  chart 
represents  every  advance  toward  harmony  as  being  made 
by  way  of  the  principle  underlying  balance,  though  in  the 
chart  itself,  this  word,  in  a  technical  sense,  is  not  used  be- 
fore we  come  to  the  fourth  line.  For  instance,  it  is  by 
bringing  together  unity  and  variety,  and  striking,  as  we 
say,  a  balance  between  them,  that  we  get  the  idea  of  com- 
plexity. In  the  same  way,  order  and  confusion  together 
suggest  counteraction;  comparison  and  contrast,  complement; 
and  principality  and  subordination,  as  in  the  head  pitted 
against  the  legs  of  a  man  dancing  on  a  tight  rope,  suggest, 
as  indicated  on  page  137  balance,  and  this,  as  in  the  case  of 
a  house  or  of  a  church  with  doors,  windows,  tower,  or  dome 
symmetrically  arranged,  suggests  organic  form.  Finally, 
when  we  come  to  giving  like  effects  to  unlike  sounds  and 
shapes  by  putting  them  into  like  measures  of  time  or  space, 
we  get  rhythm  and  proportion,  together  with  those  results  of 
coalescing  vibrations  in  which  science  has  discovered  the 
underlying  causes  of  harmony  of  tone  and  color. 

These  methods,  although,  in  the  chart,  applied  to  art- 
composition  alone,  are  allied  to  those  through  which  mental 
processes  of  thought  and  emotion  are  represented  through 
any  material  forms;  and  they  are  identical  with  those 
needed  in  order  to  produce  effects  of  beauty.19  Harmony 
characterizes  the  cause,  and  beauty  the  effect,  of  conditions 
that  are  the  same.  Neither  realizes  its  full  possibilities 
except  where  there  is  a  combination  of  a  mental  or  rational 
ideal  with  a  bodily  or  physical  form  of  expression.     What 

19  See  Chap.  I.  of  the  Author's  Genesis  of  Art- Form;  Chap.  XII.  of  his 
Art  in  Theory;  Chaps.  XI V.-XVTII.  of  his  Essentials  of  /Esthetics,  and 
almost  the  whole  of  Rhythm  and  Harmony  in  Poetry  and  Music,  and 
Proportion  and  Harmony  of  Line  and  Color. 


146  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

beauty  is  to  human  art,  moral  character  is  to  human  life. 
This  conception  is  at  the  basis  of  the  grouping  together,  of 
which  we  often  hear,  of  "the  beautiful  and  the  good,"  in- 
deed of  The  True,  the  Beautiful,  and  the  Good,  to  quote  the 
title  of  one  of  the  books  of  Victor  Cousin  (1 792-1 867).  In 
a  broad  way,  all  these  may  be  said  to  be  connected  with  the 
conception  of  harmony.  In  nature,  a  man  sometimes  finds 
objects  to  copy  that  are  beautiful  in  themselves.  In  this 
case,  as  in  what  are  termed  symmetrical  proportions  in  the 
human  form,  or  regular  features  in  the  face,  it  is  because,  as 
a  result  of  growth,  they  fulfill  the  requirements  of  harmony. 
But  a  large  part  of  the  work  of  the  artist  lies  in  arrang- 
ing features,  like  outlines,  tones,  and  colors  that  do  not 
appear  beautiful  in  nature,  so  that,  by  making  them  fulfill 
the  requirements  of  harmony,  they  shall  appear  beautiful 
in  art.  Why  are  we  not  justified  in  applying  the  same 
principles  to  character?  Some  characters — and  they  are 
those  that  men  are  most  likely  to  term  beautiful — are 
naturally  harmonious.  Others  have  to  be  made  so  by  moral 
culture. 

The  chart  indicates  that  the  primary  endeavor  in  securing 
harmony,  so  far  as  it  is  applicable  to  the  bodily  factors,  is 
order.  It  is  not  necessary  to  do  more  than  point  out  that 
the  same  fact  is  true  in  ethics.  No  moral  statement  has 
been  more  universally  accepted  than  the  declaration  of  the 
Apostle  Paul,  in  I  Cor.  10;  23,  that  "All  things  are  lawful  for 
me,  but  all  things  are  not  expedient," — in  other  words,  that 
any  deed  may  be  right  if  done  when  and  where  it  should  be 
done ;  that  anything  is  in  order  if  only  it  be  kept  in  its  own 
place.  The  same  soil  represented  in  a  painting,  if  it  be  on  a 
child's  face,  may  make  him  seem  ugly  and  disgusting,  but  if 
it  be  under  his  feet,  it  may  make  him  seem  beautiful  and 
attractive. 

The  other  methods  mentioned  in  the  chart  are,  many  of 
them,  technical,  and  are  not  applicable  except  in  the  con- 
nection in  which  they  are  there  used.  This  would  naturally  be 
the  case  with  terms  prepared  for  only  an  aesthetic  discussion. 
No  one  can  glance  at  them,  however,  without  recognizing 
that  many  of  them  refer  to  traits  as  desirable  in  human 
character  as  in  human  art, — terms,  for  instance,  like  princi- 
pality, subordination,  balance,  congruity,  comprehensive- 
ness, symmetry,  and  progress. 

Other  facts  also  that  are  true  of  aesthetic  harmony  reveal 


&STHETICAL  HARMONY  147 

the  parallelism  between  it  and  what  is  demanded  in  ethics. 
In  both  departments  every  development  follows  upon  the 
expression  of  a  single  mental  conception  in  a  single  bodily 
or  physical  form.  In  art,  for  instance,  the  conception  of 
interrogation  is  represented  in  an  upward  movement  of  the 
voice;  that  of  opposition,  in  a  clinched  fist;  that  of  support, 
in  a  curved  arch.  In  conduct,  the  conception  of  meanness 
may  be  represented  in  an  insulting  phrase,  or  that  of 
haughtiness  in  an  averted  glance  or  an  upturned  chin.  In 
both  departments,  again,  the  course  of  the  development  does 
not  cease  until  it  has  been  applied  to  factors  innumerable  in 
number  and  well-nigh  infinitely  complicated.  Harmony  of 
tone  or  color,  for  instance,  results  from  putting  together, 
in  accordance  with  the  same  principles  manifested  in  all  the 
other  methods,  such  sounds  and  sights  as  are  produced  by 
like  numbers  or  multiples  of  like  numbers  of  vibrations. 
These  vibrations  are  so  minute  that  hundreds  and  even 
trillions  of  them  may  follow  one  another  in  a  single  second. 
The  computation  of  them  is  beyond  the  possibility  of  dis- 
covery by  ordinary  observation.  Only  science  has  been 
able  to  accomplish  the  task.  Probably,  everybody  will  be 
ready  to  acknowledge  that  the  same  principle  is  illustrated 
in  ethics.  Character,  to  be  all  that  it  should  be,  must  be 
able  to  stand  the  test  not  only  of  a  few  single  actions  the 
right  and  wrong  of  which  are  clearly  evident  to  superficial 
observation,  but  of  continued  and  habitual  action,  involv- 
ing a  consideration  of  small  details  almost  as  minute  and 
complicated  as  those  entering  into  the  effects  of  art. 

Again,  harmony  in  art  is  a  result  not  only  of  grouping 
together  small  details  but  of  combining  them  so  that  they 
shall  produce  unity  of  effect:  so  that,  taken  together,  they 
shall  appear  consistent  parts  of  the  embodiment  of  a  single 
important  ideal.  This  is  true  as  applied  not  only  to  a 
painting  or  statue,  but  to  a  building  or  a  musical  composi- 
tion. What  the  artist  has  to  do  is,  first  of  all,  in  his  own 
mind  to  conceive  of  an  ideal  characterized  by  beauty  suf- 
ficient to  excite  his  emotions,  and  then  he  has  to  work  hard 
in  order  to  make  every  feature  of  his  product  a  harmonious 
part  of  this  embodiment.  In  the  same  way,  amoral  man's 
good  ideals  and  emotions  usually  antidate  his  good  deeds. 
Whenever  we  recognize  that  this  is  the  case,  and  that  his 
controlling  desires  are  predominantly  those  of  the  mind,  we 
are  accustomed  to  judge  and  to  say  that  the  one  who  is  gov- 


148  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

erned  by  them  is  a  "good  man."  But  sometimes  we  cannot 
say  of  even  such  a  man  that  his  thoughts  are  wise,  or  his 
deeds  commendable.  Why  not  ? — Because  we  perceive,  and 
have  to  acknowledge,  a  detrimental  influence  that  has  been 
exerted  upon  them  by  the  intellect  and  will  through  which, 
before  being  outwardly  expressed,  they  have  been  obliged  to 
pass.  The  fact  that  this  influence  has  been  exerted  does  not 
show  that,  in  our  conception  of  conscience,  we  should  include 
the  consideration  of  the  actions  of  both  intellect  and  will,  as 
suggested  in  the  definitions  in  footnote  5  page  63.  If  any- 
thing, it  shows  the  contrary.  Men  who  go  astray  merely  be- 
cause of  what  are  clearly  perceived  to  be  defects  of  intellect  or 
will  are  never  held  accountable  either  by  themselves  or  by 
others  for  what  are  supposed  to  be  violations  of  the  laws  of 
conscience.  We  may  be  indignant  with  a  physician  or  sur- 
geon who  makes  a  wrong  diagnosis  or  incision,  and  kills  his 
patient.  But  we  never  think  of  sending  him  to  a  reforma- 
tory to  be  converted,  or  to  a  gallows  to  be  hung.  We  recog- 
nize that  he  is  not  a  moral  delinquent,  that  probably  he  is 
not  to  be  blamed  for  anything  more  serious  than  ignorance, 
stupidity,  or  lack  of  skill.  Such  considerations  should  con- 
vince us  that  we  should  not  confound  conscience,  which 
awakens  in  a  man  a  sense  of  obligation  and  a  prompting 
toward  the  right  in  general,  with  intellect  and  will,  which,  in 
special  cases,  enable  him  to  direct  this  prompting  wisely 
and  efficiently.  At  the  same  time  we  should  never  forget 
that  all  departments — if  we  may  so  term  them — of  the  mind 
are  closely  connected.  What  characterizes  inward  con- 
science very  soon  comes  to  characterize  outward  conduct. 
That  which  is  mental  in  desire  cannot  dominate  the  bodily 
in  such  a  way  as  to  produce  a  consciousness  of  inward  har- 
mony, without  exerting  great  influence  upon  intellection 
and  volition.  This  is  the  theory  in  accordance  with  which 
the  thoughts  presented  in  this  volume  have  been  thus 
far,  and  are  hereafter  to  be,  unfolded.  Whether  a  man  be 
judged  by  some  single  action,  or  by  a  course  of  action  con- 
tinued through  a  long  interval  of  time,  the  test  through 
which  to  determine  his  moral  character  is  this :  that  his  body's 
desires  have  been  harmonized  with  his  mind's  desires  through 
being  subordinated  to  the  latter's  expressional  requirements. 
As  was  explained  on  pages  4  and  20-22,  by  the  word  mind,  as 
used  in  this  book,  is  meant  the  source  not  merely  of  the  cog- 
nitional  as  distinguished  from  the  sensational,  but  also  of 


.ESTHETIC  AND  ETHICAL  HARMONY  149 

the  rationally  non-selfish,  the  humane,  the  altruistic,  and 
the  spiritual,  as  distinguished  from  the  thoughtlessly  self- 
indulgent,  brutal,  egoistic,  and  material,  all  of  which  latter 
are  considered  developments  of  the  bodily  and  the  physical. 

In  many  other  important  regards  the  results  of  aesthetic 
harmony  and  of  what  may  be  termed  ethical  harmony  are 
analogous.  Notice  that,  as  applied  in  any  department, 
harmony  indicates  the  ending  of  conditions  occasioning 
conflict  through  using  other  means  than  suppressing  a 
contesting  source  of  activity.  There  is  a  great  difference 
between  the  results  of  harmony  and  those  of  triumph,  vic- 
tory, or  conquest.  These  latter  involve  mastery  on  the 
part  of  one  of  the  contending  parties  or  factors  and  the 
overthrow  or  enslavement  of  the  other.  After  this  effect 
has  been  produced,  there  may  be  a  cessation  of  conflict,  but 
there  never  can  be  thoroughly  satisfactory  or  enduring  peace. 
This,  when  worth  having,  can  result  only  from  some  arrange- 
ment, adjustment,  or  assimilation  that  recognizes  the  rights 
of  all  the  contending  parties,  and  does  proportionately  equal 
justice  to  each  of  them.  Where  this  result  is  reached,  we 
are  accustomed  to  say  that  the  factors  that  have  been  in 
conflict  have  been  harmonized.  But,  as  brought  out  in 
Chapter  IX.,  this  is  exactly  what  is  done  when  the  differences 
between  desires  of  the  body  and  of  the  mind  have  been 
adjusted  ethically. 

Notice,  too,  that,  ethical,  like  aesthetic  effects,  are  ex- 
perienced, in  large  measure,  at  least,  in  the  sensitive  and 
emotional  nature,  before  they  make  a  distinct  appeal  to  the 
rational  understanding.  The  art-lover  judges  and  works 
as  guided  by  feeling  and  sentiment  long  before  he  proceeds, 
through  methods  of  thought,  to  ascertain  whether  effects 
of  tone  or  color  fulfill  aesthetic  requirements  as  these  have 
been  systemized  by  science.  Of  course,  the  reasons  for 
many — perhaps  for  all — of  these  requirements  may  be  ascer- 
tained and  explained;  and  a  study  of  the  subject  may  greatly 
increase  an  artist's  ability  to  conform  to  them.  But  before 
and  aside  from  any  exercise  of  mere  understanding,  the 
ears  and  eyes  must  be  able  to  recognize  their  results;  and, 
were  one  deaf  or  blind  and  were  he,  for  this  reason,  to  fail 
to  experience  the  sensation  of  harmony,  no  explanation 
could  furnish  a  substitute  for  it.  According  to  what  has 
been  said,  exactly  the  same  principle  applies  to  ethics.  The 
desires  in  conflict  which  occasion  the  disorder  that  needs 


150  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

to  be  alleviated  themselves  involve  feelings;  and  it  is  of 
them,  and  of  the  necessity  of  doing  something  to  put  an  end 
to  the  discomfort  that  they  occasion,  that  a  man  is  first 
conscious;  and  if  harmony  results,  it  is  amid  his  desires  that 
he  first  experiences  its  influence. 

Notice,  again,  that,  as  in  aesthetic  harmony,  that  which 
may  be  termed  ethical  can  be  experienced  by  anyone  who 
possesses  only  ordinary  human  intelligence.  It  is  not  a 
perquisite  of  "the  wise  and  prudent"  alone,  as  seems  to  be 
the  case  with  some  of  the  results  in  consciousness  seemingly 
required  by  certain  phases  of  the  teleological  and  utilitarian 
theories.  Harmony  or  discord  in  music  can  be  recognized 
when  produced  upon  an  instrument  of  six  strings,  like  a 
guitar;  or  of  eighty  or  more,  like  a  piano.  So  with  har- 
mony or  discord  in  moral  results.  The  fully  cultivated 
man  of  many  talents,  able  to  respond  to  that  which  comes 
from  many  sources  of  information,  may  give  a  more  in- 
telligent and  complete  expression  to  the  feeling  awak- 
ened by  conscience,  because  able  with  more  effectiveness 
to  apply  it  to  more  subjects;  but  the  feeling  in  itself  alone 
may  be  no  more  clearly  recognized  by  him  than  by  the  most 
uneducated  child  or  inexperienced  savage.  This  is  a  fact 
which,  as  applied  to  ethics,  needs,  especially  in  our  times,  to 
be  strongly  emphasized.  The  present  influence  of  science 
and  the  predominating  appeal  to  intellect  have  directed  the 
attention  of  people,  not  too  largely  perhaps,  but  certainly  too 
exclusively,  to  the  importance  of  imparting,  to  the  young 
and  ignorant,  information  and  explanation.  In  their  way 
these  may  greatly  strengthen  and  develop  one's  character. 
But,  as  already  intimated  in  another  place,  to  suppose  that 
they  are  absolutely  essential  to  elementary  morality  is  to 
make  a  grave  mistake.  Before  receiving  instruction,  even 
when  a  child,  one  often  recognizes  from  mere  feeling  that 
his  own  nature  is  out  of  harmony,  and  not  only  this,  but  the 
reason  for  it.  Is  it  some  nervous  bodily  temper  that  over- 
comes him?  In  the  humiliation  that  he  experiences,  he 
himself  appears  often  to  be  able  to  recognize  that  what 
he  needs  is  to  be  more  thoughtful;  i.e.,  to  fulfill  the  mental 
requirements  within  him.  Is  it  a  bodily  craving  for  food, 
or  for  exercise,  which  causes  excesses  of  appetite  or  of  play, 
and,  when  one  grows  older,  turns  him  into  a  drunkard,  a 
gambler,  a  defaulter,  a  debauchee,  a  degenerate?  In  the 
pain  and  shame  that  he  experiences,  he,  too,  seems  to 


ESTHETIC  AND  ETHICAL  HARMONY  151 

recognize  that  what  he  needs  is  to  be  made  more  thoughtful, 
to  get  into  a  condition,  and  to  continue  in  it,  where  his  rea- 
son and  judgment  can  act  clearly  and  authoritatively, — in 
other  words,  where  he  can  fulfill  mental  requirements,  and, 
by  so  doing,  make  a  man  and  not  a  beast  of  himself.  Or, 
again,  is  he  overcome  by  an  impulse  to  possess  and  to  use  for 
his  own  exclusive  benefit  that  which  in  the  material  world 
environs  the  physical  body?  Is  he  tempted  to  obtain 
comfort,  honor,  position,  property,  control,  and  immunity 
from  the  opposition  of  those  surrounding  him,  and,  therefore, 
to  ignore,  discredit,  deceive,  defraud,  oppress,  oppose,  or 
kill  his  fellows  ?  He  himself,  aside  from  what  he  can  hear  or 
learn  from  others,  cannot  fail  often  to  feel  that,  in  doing 
these  things,  he  is  not  exercising  thought  with  reference  to 
his  own  interests  or  those  of  his  neighbors, — in  other  words 
again,  is  not  fulfilling  the  mind's  requirements.  In  fact, 
there  is  hardly  anything  connected  with  the  conditions 
or  activities  of  a  human  being  which  does  not  naturally  and 
logically  suggest  the  necessity  for  the  dominance  of  mind 
and  the  subordination  of  the  body.  This  is  true  as  ap- 
plied even  to  that  which  is  represented  through  the  mere 
appearance  of  his  human  form.  His  head  is  uppermost, 
and  in  it  are  the  eyes  and  ears  that  most  directly  minister  to 
the  higher  nature.  Next  in  importance  in  serving  the  same 
nature,  and  immediately  below  it,  is  the  breast,  the  seat  of 
the  heart  and  lungs,  and,  connected  with  it,  the  arms  and 
hands.  Lower  down  are  the  distinctly  bodily  or  physical 
organs  of  digestion  and  propagation  and,  lowest  of  all,  the 
legs  and  feet,  whose  chief  function  seems  to  be  to  carry 
eyes,  ears,  mouth,  and  hands  to  places  where  they  can  be 
made  to  do  that  which  the  mind  demands. 

Another  fact  with  reference  to  aesthetic  harmony  that  is 
paralleled  by  that  which  is  true  of  ethical  harmony,  is  that, 
while  it  can  be  enjoyed  and  to  a  limited  extent  produced 
by  one  who  has  not  made  a  special  study  of  the  subject, 
nevertheless  such  study  can  greatly  increase  a  knowledge 
of  the  principles  underlying  the  subject  and  ability  to  ap- 
ply them  in  practice.  It  was  said  on  page  142  that  artistic 
harmony  is  a  product  of  a  man  as  distinguished  from  a 
lower  animal — a  distinctive  product,  in  other  words,  of  the 
human  mind.  This  implies  that  in  addition  to  the  feeling 
which,  as  has  been  said,  recognizes,  as  it  were,  instinctively 
the  presence  or  absence  of  harmony,  its  completed  results, 


152  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

such  as  are  manifested  in  the  works  of  the  great  composers, 
always  involve,  in  connection  with  feeling,  other  thoughtful 
activities  of  which  the  mind  is  capable.  The  principles  of 
musical  harmony  have  been  studied  already  for  more  than 
twenty-five  centuries ;  and  even  yet  its  possibilities  have  not 
all  been  developed.  The  same  is  true  of  the  principles  of 
morality.  It  has  been  argued  in  this  volume  that  the  influ- 
ence upon  them  of  desire,  and,  therefore,  of  the  feeling  or 
emotion  in  desire  is  primary  and  universal;  but  it  has  also 
been  reiterated  many  times  that  in  every  desire  the 
thinking  mind  cooperates  with  this  feeling  or  emotion. 
Both  these  conceptions  can  be  held  at  one  and  the  same  time 
without  either  belittling  the  importance  of  that  which  is 
derived  from  feeling  or  exaggerating  the  importance  of 
that  which  is  derived  from  intellection.  If  we  had  no  people 
prompted  by  feeling,  or  by  natural  instinct,  as  we  say, 
to  become  musical  or  moral,  we  should  have  none  who  would 
become  so  through  culture;  and  there  would  be  no  high 
achievements  in  either  of  the  two  directions. 

It  is  important  to  bear  in  mind,  too,  that  these  desires  of 
the  mind,  as  has  already  been  intimated,  are  needed  to 
counteract  not  merely  some  single  cases  of  wrong  doing 
to  which  one  is  suddenly  and  unexpectedly  impelled,  but  to 
counteract  complicated  courses  of  action  with  which  these 
sudden  acts  are  necessarily  connected,  and  of  which  they 
might  be  said  to  be  expected  developments.  This  fact,  too, 
seems  to  be  indicated  in  the  experiences  of  the  very  young. 
Those  periods  of  depression  and  melancholy  through  which 
large  numbers  pass  just  at  the  time  when  they  are  leaving 
childhood  and  entering  upon  early  manhood  and  woman- 
hood are  not  caused,  as  a  rule,  by  a  conflict  of  desires 
occasioned  by  some  single  temptation.  They  are  caused  by 
the  general  condition  of  conflict  now,  for  the  first  time, 
plainly  recognized  as  within  themselves,  as  existing  between 
their  own  personal  higher  and  lower  desires.  Up  to  this 
time  in  life,  the  normal  child  has  been  guided  by  his  parents 
and  teachers.  Their  influence  upon  him  has  been  sufficient, 
if  not  to  subordinate  for  him  his  lower  desires,  at  least  to  rid 
him,  in  part,  of  the  feeling  that  he  himself  should  be  respon- 
sible for  subordinating  them.  When  he  recognizes  that  this 
responsibility  is  thrust  upon  himself  alone,  he  not  infre- 
quently goes  through  an  experience  like  that  represented  by 
the  story  in  the  New  Testament  of  Jesus  when  tempted  in 


HARMONY  WITHIN  ONE'S  OWN  SPIRIT  153 

the  wilderness  by  the  devil  (See  Matt,  iv.,  1-9),  and  the  only 
satisfactory  way,  often,  of  putting  an  end  to  such  experi- 
ences is  to  make  a  deliberate  choice,  indefinite  often  as 
applied  to  particular  actions,  yet  very  definite  as  applied  to 
general  conduct,  that  all  life  hereafter  shall  be  based  upon 
the  principle  of  subordinating,  so  far  as  seems  necessary,  the 
bodily  to  the  mental,  the  irrational  to  the  reasonable,  the 
material  to  the  spiritual.  This  is  a  principle  influencing,  as 
we  have  found,  first  the  desires  themselves,  and,  subse- 
quently, as  a  rule,  all  the  psychical  activities  through  which 
they  can  find  expression.  The  principle  may  not  come  to 
be  fulfilled  until  after  years  of  indecision  and  consequent 
mental  disturbance  and  unhappiness.  But  sometimes 
the  result  may  follow  almost  immediately,  and  when  the 
relationship  between  lower  and  higher  desire  is  once  deter- 
mined, many  keen  observers  hold  to  the  opinion  that  it  is 
likely  to  be  determined  then  and  there  for  all  time. 

Finally,  it  is  well  to  emphasize  here  once  more  the  fact 
that  the  influence  of  aesthetic  harmony  is  always  non-selfish 
(see  page  20).  Works  of  music,  poetry,  painting,  sculpture, 
or  architecture  may  be  purchased  or  stolen  and  kept  where 
others  cannot  see  or  hear  them:  but  there  is  no  reason  in 
nature  why  this  should  be  the  case.  Millions  of  people  may 
derive  their  fill  of  delight  or  inspiration  from  them  without 
lessening  in  the  least  that  which  could  be  imparted  to  only 
one  of  their  number.  It  is  the  same  with  the  effects  of  what 
has  here  been  termed  ethical  harmony  as  produced  between 
conflicting  tendencies  in  character.  The  man  whose  bodily 
nature  has  been  adjusted  to  the  requirements  of  his  higher 
mental  and  rational  nature  brings  profit  and  pleasure  not 
only  to  himself  but  to  all  by  whom  he  is  surrounded.  They 
enjoy  life  with  him  no  less  than  he  enjoys  his  own  life. 
This  is  the  fundamental  truth  underlying  the  injunction, 
often  repeated  by  writers  like  Goethe  and  Emerson,  urging 
upon  individuals  the  duty  above  all  things  of  self-culture. 
The  injunction  may  be  interpreted  to  mean  a  culture  of 
selfishness;  but  never  by  one  whose  conception  of  that 
which  should  dominate  is  the  higher  and  better  self,  and 
whose  conception  of  culture  is  that  which  is  imparted  to  the 
bodily  by  the  rational. 

To  a  man  who  has  this  conception,  harmony  within  one's 
own  spirit  will  be  recognized  to  be  only  a  prelude  necessarily 
followed  by  harmony  between  different  spirits.     As  the 


154  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

thoughts  and  emotions  of  the  mind  are  developed  from  that 
which  is  communicated  through  the  eyes  and  ears  (see 
page  20) ,  nothing  external  to  the  man  can  be  excluded  from 
the  mind's  range  of  that  which  is  fitted  to  influence  higher 
desires.  Every  surrounding  object  attaches  him  to  the 
universe  outside  of  him  of  which  he  seems  a  part ;  while,  at 
the  same  time,  he  seems  a  partner  with  every  living  being 
that  inhabits  it.  From  the  theory  here  presented,  all  that 
is  true  in  the  systems  that  emphasize  the  obligations  arising 
from  one's  relations  to  others  and  from  the  sense  of  national 
or  universal  brotherhood  follows  as  a  corollary.  The 
theory  does  not  lessen  one's  conception  of  the  duty  of 
striving  for  the  welfare  of  his  fellows;  but,  in  connection 
with  this,  it  emphasizes  two  other  conceptions  that  some 
of  the  merely  altruistic  systems  are  inclined  to  ignore. 
Because  the  mental  includes  the  rational,  it  emphasizes 
the  intellectual  as  well  as  the  spiritual ;  and,  because  where 
necessary  the  mental  subordinates  the  bodily  in  personal 
character,  it  emphasizes  the  benefit  imparted  by  morality  to 
the  individual  himself  as  well  as  by  himself  to  others  of  his 
community.  There  is,  however,  and  should  be  noticed, 
an  exceptional  condition  to  which  the  principles  just  stated 
do  not  apply.  It  is  illustrated  in  cases  of  emergency,  as 
in  warfare,  which  seem  to  call  for  complete  self-sacrifice, — 
cases  in  which  a  hero  not  only  imperils  but  surrenders  his 
own  life  in  order  to  save  that  of  another.  What  seems  to 
be  true  of  such  cases  is  that  they  transcend  the  fulfillment 
of  merely  moral  obligation.  They  conform  to  religious 
prompting.  They  prove  that  the  agent,  whatever  he  may 
say  of  his  own  beliefs,  down  deep  in  his  soul,  possibly 
unconsciously  to  himself,  has  an  overmastering  faith  in  the 
existence  of  a  life  after  death.  Fortunately,  however, 
Providence  demands  this  form  of  self-sacrifice  only  rarely. 
As  a  rule,  what  most  men  most  often  need  is  the  discipline 
that  comes  from  their  remaining  in  the  world.  Otherwise, 
they  would  not  be  in  it.  Conversely,  too,  what  the  world 
about  them  most  often  needs  is  the  rational  mode  of  life  to 
which  their  own  everyday  example  is  fitted  to  incite  their 
fellows. 


CHAPTER  XII 

DESIRES  OF  THE  MIND  AND  OF  THE  BODY  AS  INFLUENCED  BY 
OBSERVATION,  EXPERIENCE,  AND  INFORMATION 

Recapitulation — Practical  Applications  of  our  Subject  to  be  Considered 
First  in  their  General  Relations  to  all  Actions — Effort  Needed  in 
Order  to  Strengthen  the  Desires  of  the  Mind — That  which  Appeals 
to  the  Mind  as  Desirable — It  is  Ascertained  through  Observation, 
Experiment,  and  Information — Observation  as  Influencing  Imita- 
tion— Training  Imparted  by  Environment — Through  Effects  of 
which  One  is  not  Conscious — Influence  of  Suggestion — Strongest 
when  its  Results  Appear  Desirable  in  Themselves  or  so  because 
Presented  by  One  Personally  Admired — Need  of  Caution  in  Choos- 
ing Associations — Opportunities  for  Influence  Need  to  be  Appro- 
priated— Mistakes  of  Asceticism — Puritanism — Its  Fundamental 
Conception — That  which  is  Desirable  as  Ascertained  through  Ex- 
periment— Actions  Tend  to  Repeat  Themselves — Especially  Ac- 
tions Involving  Morality — Guilt  Determined  by  Quality  not 
Quantity  of  Action — Molding  Character  by  Causing  Repetitions 
of  Actions — Not  Successful  when  Undesirable  Acts  are  Repeated — 
That  which  is  Desirable  as  Ascertained  through  Information — 
The  Most  Intelligent  not  the  Most  Moral — Moral  Effects  Depend 
upon  the  Influence  Exerted  upon  Desire — and  upon  the  Uncon- 
scious as  well  as  Conscious  Mind — What  Determines  the  Moral 
Effects  of  Information — Mistakes  of  Modern  Methods  of  Imparting 
Information;  Newspapers — Novels,  Plays,  and  Moving  Pictures — 
Moral  Studies  in  Schools — Influences  to  Inspire  Higher  Desire 
Should  Accompany  Information. 


THE  logical  inference  from  the  line  of  thought  unfolded 
thus  far  in  this  volume  is  that  moral  character  is 
determined  primarily  by  the  character  of  the  desires 
that  underlie  and  animate  conduct.  Some  of  these  desires 
are  largely  or  entirely  of  the  body  and  some  are  largely  or 
entirely  of  the  mind;  and  the  two  classes  of  desire  are  often 
antagonistic,  causing  a  man  to  be  conscious,  as  in  what  is 
termed  conscience,  of  a  conflict  between  them.  This  con- 
flict, before  the  mind  can  experience  that  peace  which  it 

155 


156  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

naturally  craves,  needs  to  be  made  to  cease;  and  it  has  been 
shown  that  this  result  can  be  best  attained  not  through  the 
suppression  of  either  class  of  desires,  but,  by  bringing  about 
a  condition  in  which  both  classes  can  work  together  in  har- 
mony. It  has  been  shown,  too,  that  harmony  is  a  result 
achieved  in  the  degree  in  which  desires  are  exercised  in 
such  ways  that,  when  two  conflict,  the  one  that  is  more 
largely  of  the  mind  outweighs  by  its  influence  and  keeps  in 
subordination  the  one  that  is  more  largely  of  the  body. 

Having  reached  this  theoretical  conclusion,  we  are  pre- 
pared now  to  discuss  the  more  practical  applications  of  our 
subject.  In  the  present  chapter  these  will  be  considered  in 
their  general  relations  to  all  actions;  and  in  subsequent 
chapters  in  their  special  relations  to  particular  actions. 
Under  each  head  also,  in  fulfillment  of  the  trend  of  thought  on 
page  154,  and  of  the  method  hitherto  adopted  in  this  volume, 
inferences  will  be  drawn  with  reference  to  conduct  as  exer- 
cised both  toward  oneself,  or  in  behalf  of  one's  own  interests, 
and  toward  others,  or  in  behalf  of  their  interests. 

In  accordance  with  this  plan,  our  first  thought  is  most 
naturally  suggested  by  the  emphasis  that  has  been  placed 
upon  the  influence  of  desires  in  general.  If  these,  in  the 
degree  in  which  they  incline  toward  the  right  or  wrong, 
determine,  as  brought  out  in  Chapter  III.,  the  right  or  wrong 
trend  of  a  man's  whole  nature,  then  the  most  important 
general  contribution  that  he  can  make  toward  the  practical 
fulfillment  of  moral  obligation  is  to  cultivate  what  in  the 
preceding  chapters  has  been  termed  a  harmonious  condi- 
tion of  desires  in  himself  and  in  others  over  whom  he  may 
be  able  to  exert  influence.  Moreover,  if  this  harmonious  con- 
dition result,  as  indicated  in  Chapter  XL,  from  the  degree 
in  which,  whenever  different  classes  of  desires  are  in  conflict, 
those  that  are  bodily  are  kept  in  subordination  to  those  that 
are  mental,  then,  in  so  far  as  this  is  not  the  case,  an  effort  is 
needed  in  order  to  develop  and  strengthen  the  latter  desires. 

It  is  only  uttering  a  truism  to  say  that  all  desires,  whether 
bodily  or  mental,  are  directed  toward  the  attainment  of  cer- 
tain ends  because  these  appeal  to  consciousness  as  desirable. 
They  may  appear  to  be  thus  directed,  either  because  they  are 
supposed  to  bring  a  passive  form  of  satisfaction,  as  when 
something  is  felt  to  be  fitting  or  appropriate  (see  page  95), 
or  an  active  form  of  enjoyment.  In  the  former  case  there 
might  be  only  a  mild  experience  of  contentment;  and  in  the 


OBSERVATION  157 

latter  there  might  be  a  wild  exuberance  of  delight.  Some, 
in  certain  circumstances,  would  prefer  the  former  to  the 
latter;  but  nothing  that  could  not  find  a  place  for  itself 
between  these  two  extremes  could  ever,  by  any  possibility, 
appear  desirable.  To  be  able  to  do  this,  it  must  give  promise 
of  affording  satisfaction  or  enjoyment;  and,  if  it  awaken  a 
desire  in  conflict  with  another,  which  should  be  subordi- 
nated, as  is  the  condition  where  the  mental  and  the  bodily 
are  in  antagonism,  then  that  which  appeals  to  the  former 
of  these  should  give  promise  of  more  satisfaction  or  enjoy- 
ment than  does  the  latter.  This  truth  is  the  one  that  is 
supposed  to  justify  the  "greatest  happiness"  theory.  But 
the  word  happiness  is  not  sufficiently  comprehensive  in  its 
meaning.  Satisfaction  indicates  what  is  broader.  It  may 
exist,  as  in  cases  of  self-denial  and  self-sacrifice,  where  there 
is  very  little  that  could  be  termed  happiness. 

Now  let  us  consider  the  methods  through  which  the  mind 
comes  to  recognize  what  it  is  that  is  desirable, — what  it  is 
that,  when  one  is  choosing,  gives  promise  of  more  or  less 
satisfaction  or  enjoyment.  In  answer,  we  shall  find  three 
such  methods  that  are  in  constant  use  and  are  particularly 
prominent.  These  are  observation,  experience,  and  infor- 
mation,— that  which  a  man  notices  in  others,  that  which  he 
derives  from  his  own  experiments,  and  that  which  he  obtains 
from  hearsay. 

Observation  antidates  all  other  mental  response  to  the 
influence  of  the  outside  world.  It  is  necessarily  so  with 
children,  but  it  is  naturally  so,  too,  with  grown  people.  No 
other  fact  can  account  for  the  similarity  in  customs,  cos- 
tumes, sentiments,  opinions,  tastes,  and  judgments  that 
characterize  all  the  members  of  the  same  communities. 
This  similarity  is  manifested  often  even  among  those  who 
do  not  seem  to  derive  personal  satisfaction  from  the  courses 
adopted,  nor  approve  of  them  intellectually.  It  is  appar- 
ently extremely  difficult  to  prevent  large  numbers  of  people 
from  imitating  those  about  them,  no  matter  how  many  argu- 
ments against  doing  this  might  be  drawn  from  their  own 
experience  or  from  information  imparted  by  others.  Boys 
in  America,  for  instance,  because  they  observe  that  large 
numbers  of  men  think  smoking  desirable,  learn  to  smoke 
themselves,  notwithstanding  the  nausea  that  accompanies 
their  earliest  experiments  in  this  direction,  and  the  universal 
testimony  of  teachers  and  physicians  that  in  youth  tobacco 


158  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

weakens  the  brain  and,  both  in  youth  and  in  age,  the  heart. 
A  few  years  ago,  young  women  in  America  squeezed  their 
waists  and  in  China  their  feet,  notwithstanding  their  own 
experience  of  great  discomfort  in  the  one  case,  and  of  great 
agony  in  the  other,  and  the  testimony  of  other  people  to 
inform  them  with  reference  to  future  disease  or  cripplement 
awaiting  such  practices. 

Perhaps  the  majority  of  the  results  of  thinking  and  acting 
that  become  what  is  termed  conventional  are  trained  into 
men  by  imitation  of  that  which  they  observe — a  fact  which 
one  should  bear  in  mind  whether  he  be  considering  his  ac- 
tions as  related  to  his  own  development  or  to  that  of  others. 
Nor  must  it  be  supposed  that  it  is  the  young  or  the  weak- 
minded  alone  who  are  thus  influenced.  The  author  met 
James  Russell  Lowell  shortly  after  his  return  to  America, 
subsequent  to  his  Ambassadorship  to  England.  He  was  at 
that  time  over  seventy  years  of  age.  Yet  during  the  few 
years  in  which  he  had  lived  abroad,  he  had  acquired  not 
only  a  decided  English  accent,  but  a  rolling  of  the  r  that 
might  justifiably  be  ascribed  to  an  English  "brogue."  An- 
other example :  There  is  no  one  in  America  to  whom  greater 
power  of  originality  and  initiative  could  be  rightly  attrib- 
uted than  to  the  late  Theodore  Roosevelt.  When  he  was 
about  thirty  years  of  age  he  told  the  author  that  he  had 
made  up  his  mind  not  to  live  any  longer  on  his  Western 
ranch.  His  reason  was  that  he  had  found  that  the  surround- 
ings there  had  a  tendency  to  unfit  a  man  for  conditions  in 
the  East,  where  he  thought  that,  on  the  whole,  his  own  work 
ought  to  be  done.  Of  course,  he  was  referring  to  only  men- 
tal surroundings.  But  if  a  man  of  his  strength  of  character 
could  refer  to  these  in  such  language,  how  much  more  reason 
would  an  ordinary  man  have  to  refer  in  like  manner  to  moral 
surroundings ! 

Every  child  and  every  person,  too,  in  mature  life  should 
be  taught  to  bear  in  mind  constantly  the  importance  of 
placing  and  keeping  oneself,  so  far  as  possible,  in  an  environ- 
ment tending  to  strengthen  and  increase  the  efficiency  of 
his  own  highest  desires.  All  of  us — sometimes  even  when 
very  young — are  aware  that  certain  places  and  persons, 
certain  forms  of  recreation  and  occupation,  are  likely  of 
themselves  to  have  upon  the  one  who  chooses  them  an  up- 
lifting moral  effect,  and  that  certain  others  are  likely  to 
have  the  opposite.    Few,  however,  fully  realize  the  impor- 


INFL  UENCE  OF  EN  VIRONMENT  159 

tance  of  treating  the  choice,  when  it  is  made,  with  sufficient 
seriousness.  As  in  solving  every  other  problem  of  life,  so 
here,  foresight,  which  is  the  chief  characteristic  of  wisdom  in 
any  line,  is  by  no  means  universal.  What,  in  the  beginning, 
may  be  an  expression  of  nothing  more  than  incautious 
curiosity  or  non-calculating  self-confidence  may  lead  in  the 
end  to  moral  ruin. 

It  seems  particularly  important  to  direct  attention  to  this 
fact  because  the  effects  of  observation  are  usually  exerted 
through  processes  of  thought  of  which  the  mind  that  they 
influence  is  not  conscious.  A  man  like  Theodore  Roosevelt 
might  recognize  the  results  of  their  processes  in  new  tastes, 
aims,  or  habits  that  he  found  forming  themselves  within 
him;  and  a  man  like  James  Russell  Lowell,  if  his  attention 
were  called  to  his  accent,  might  recognize  the  results  of 
association  with  Englishmen.  But  a  person  would  show  as 
little  knowledge  of  human  nature  in  general  as  of  the  natures 
of  these  men  in  particular,  who  could  accuse  either  of  them 
of  acquiring  results  like  these  through  conscious  imitation. 
This  fact  is  pointed  out  because  of  its  illustrating  an  ex- 
tremely important  truth.  It  is  this, — that  the  effects  of 
environment,  of  the  conditions  in  life  and  of  the  character 
of  the  persons  by  whom  one  is  surrounded,  are  more  often 
than  not  exerted  upon  the  mind's  unconscious  rather  than 
conscious  processes  of  thought.  What  is  meant  by  the  un- 
conscious processes,  philosophers  of  every  school  have  ex- 
plained. A  somewhat  extended  discussion  of  them  will  be 
found  in  the  Author's  Psychology  of  Inspiration,  Chapters 
III.  to  VI.,  inclusive.  Here  it  is  sufficient  to  say  that,  in  dis- 
tinction from  such  contents  of  the  mind  as  are  floating,  so 
to  speak,  on  the  surface  of  the  stream  of  thought,  and  are 
therefore,  recognized  by  consciousness,  these  unconscious 
processes  are  the  constituent  elements  of  the  deeper  currents 
constantly  flowing  on  beneath  the  surface.  That  they  are 
there,  and  constantly  there,  is  evinced  by  the  phenomena  in 
natural  sleep  of  somnambulism  and  of  other  forms  of  dream- 
ing, as  well  as  by  the  results  of  hypnotism  and  allied  occult 
methods  which  are  artificially  induced.  Besides  this, 
largely  through  their  influence  upon  the  associations  of 
ideas,  these  unconscious  forces  are  recognized  as  powerful 
factors  in  determining  the  courses  and  conceptions  of  reverie, 
the  picturings  of  imagination,  the  surmisals  of  speculation, 
and  the  conclusions  of  reasoning. 


l6o  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

It  has  been  found  through  experiments  in  hypnotism  that 
the  most  effective  influence  upon  these  processes — the  in- 
fluence that  can  best  impel  their  general  tendency  toward 
the  attainment  of  particular  objects — is  exerted  not  directly 
by  way  of  information  or  argument,  but  indirectly  by  way 
of  suggestion.  A  hypnotizer,  for  instance,  after  he  has 
put  to  sleep  the  conscious  powers  of  a  man  and  is  trying 
to  awaken  to  action  his  unconscious  powers,  does  not  as- 
sume the  attitude  of  an  instructor  or  a  reasoner.  He 
merely  calls  to  the  attention  of  his  patients  a  certain 
place,  person,  object,  or  project,  after  which,  starting  with 
this  as  a  source  of  suggestion,  their  minds  continue  to 
develop  thoughts  concerning  it  until  they  receive  another 
suggestion. 

What  a  mind  derives  from  observation  seems  to  come  to 
it  in  the  same  way  as  does  that  which  follows  the  suggestion 
of  a  hypnotizer — in  other  words,  indirectly  and  without  any 
conscious  guidance  on  the  part  of  the  one  who  experiences 
the  thought.  As  in  the  cases  just  mentioned  of  President 
Roosevelt  and  Ambassador  Lowell,  nothing  has  been  know- 
ingly, much  less  intentionally,  acquired.  Nevertheless,  this 
much  must  be  said  in  addition, — that  observation  seldom,  if 
ever,  leads  to  imitation  except  of  outward  manner,  and  this 
for  the  purpose  of  burlesque,  unless,  for  some  reason,  that 
which  is  imitated  has  been  made  to  appear  desirable  to  the 
one  who  imitates  it.  All  of  us  have  known  of  persons  who 
have  lived  for  years  in  what  to  them  was  an  undesirable 
environment  without  apparently  acquiring  any  of  the  traits 
that  they  disliked.  The  author  can  recall  an  American 
family  of  boys  brought  up  in  London,  and  having  the  ex- 
perience of  associating  with  fellow  students  in  institutions  of 
the  rank  of  Rugby  School  and  Cambridge  University,  who, 
when  they  came  home,  had  no  accent  that  particularly  dis- 
tinguished them  from  their  American  associates.  Possibly 
a  reason  for  this  might  be  surmised  from  the  fact  that,  when 
they  wanted  to  amuse  their  American  friends  who  visited 
them  in  London,  they  would  assume  an  exaggerated  cock- 
ney drawl  and  say :  "  Now  let's  talk  English."  Is  it  not  pos- 
sible that  the  peculiarities  of  English  pronunciation  which 
Mr.  Lowell  had  encountered  in  the  drawing-room  had  been 
unconsciously  imitated  by  him  because  they  had  seemed  to 
him  desirable,  whereas  those  which  had  been  encountered 
by  these  youngsters,  largely  probably,  in  the  kitchen  and  on 


I  NFL  UENCE  O  F  EN  VIRONMENT  1 6 1 

the  street,  had  not  been  unconsciously  imitated  because  they 
had  not  seemed  desirable? 

This,  however,  is  merely  theoretic.  One  must  not  make 
too  much  of  it.  And  yet  a  shrewd  use  of  suggestions  is  the 
most  prominent  of  the  characteristics  that  distinguish  a 
man  who  is  sagacious.  Whether  or  not  this  particular  sug- 
gestion furnishes  additional  testimony  to  the  subject  now 
under  consideration,  the  evidence  from  other  sources  seems 
overwhelming  that  unconscious  imitation  is  practiced  by  the 
observer  in  the  degree  in  which  that  which  is  observed  ap- 
pears desirable.  It  may  appear  thus  either  because,  as 
already  intimated,  it  seems  to  afford  interest  or  enjoyment 
to  the  person  who  is  the  source  of  it,  or  because  this  person, 
as  one  who  is  loved  and  respected,  affords  interest  and  enjoy- 
ment, and  because  his  actions,  being  a  part  of  him,  seem  to 
be  equally  desirable  with  himself. 

These  facts  carry  with  them  their  own  lesson  of  caution 
with  reference  to  the  influences  by  which  one  allows  himself 
to  be  surrounded,  and  with  reference  to  the  exercise  of  fore- 
sight in  selecting  the  friends,  businesses,  pleasures,  and 
associations  in  general  that  will  be  most  likely  to  awaken 
and  thus  strengthen  and  develop  higher  rather  than  lower 
desires.  Fortunately,  the  range  of  persons  and  purposes  to 
which  this  method  of  selection  can  be  applied  is  well-nigh 
infinite.  As  brought  out  in  Chapter  X.,  it  is  less  the  instru- 
mentality used  than  the  methods  of  using  it  that  determines 
right  or  wrong.  It  would  be  difficult  to  find  anything  in  the 
world,  spiritual,  mental,  or  material,  that  could  not  in  some 
way  contribute  to  moral  requirements.  The  home,  the 
school,  the  shop,  the  factory,  the  farm,  the  library,  the  art 
museum,  the  courthouse,  the  statehouse,  the  church  and, 
in  fact,  all  the  avenues  of  civilization  that  lead  into  or 
through  any  of  these  are  crowded  with  associations  and 
opportunities  that  appeal  to  higher  as  contrasted  with  lower 
desire.  But,  as  indicated  on  page  197,  the  lower  or  bodily 
desires  are  the  earliest  to  manifest  their  presence,  and  fev/ 
can  turn  from  them  to  serve  the  higher  or  mental  without 
an  expenditure  of  effort. 

What  has  been  said  should  be  borne  in  mind  in  one's 
treatment  both  of  himself  and  of  others.  To  attain  moral 
excellence,  a  man  must  exert  himself,  and  to  enable  others 
to  attain  it,  he  must  present  it  to  them  in  such  ways  as  to 
induce  them  to  exert  themselves.     As  the  exertion  that  is 


1 62  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

required  results  from  the  effort  of  mental  desire  to  keep 
bodily  desire  in  subordination,  that  which  ought  to  be  done 
needs  to  be  presented  to  oneself  or  represented  to  others  as 
mentally  desirable  not  only,  but  also  as  more  desirable  than 
if  it,  or  something  else,  were  merely  bodily  desirable.  To 
others  it  can  be  made  to  appear  thus,  as  has  been  said  al- 
ready, either  because  of  the  pleasure  that  it  seems  to  give 
the  people  who  experience  it;  or  because  of  the  character  of 
these  people  which  is  so  attractive  in  itself  as  to  make  every- 
thing attractive  that  is  in  any  way  connected  with  them. 
A  boy  is  more  likely  to  imitate  a  habit  of  a  teacher  whom  he 
admires  than  of  one  whom  he  does  not  admire. 

The  moment  that  this  is  said,  many  of  us  will  have  sug- 
gested the  mistakes  of  the  ascetic  puritanism  of  our  coun- 
try's earlier  history.  This  system  produced  some  results 
that  were  of  great  value.  From  its  sense  of  responsibility  to 
man,  and  of  accountability  to  God,  few  could  fail  to  receive 
important  lessons  with  reference  to  both  the  dangers  and 
the  dignity  of  human  life.  Exceptional  conscientiousness 
and  efficiency  became  characteristic  of  many  of  those  whose 
education  and  training  were  attributable  to  the  system. 
But,  for  all  that,  there  were  always  a  number  among  those 
influenced  by  it  to  whom  it  did  more  harm  than  good. 
These  were  made  up  of  various  classes,  but  all  of  them 
agreed  in  this, — that  they  were  conscious — some  only  mildly 
and  some  very  wildly — of  a  lower  as  well  as  a  higher  nature, 
both  of  which  they  thought  should  be  included  in  any  rightly 
comprehensive  consideration  of  life.  Some  of  those  who 
rebelled  against  the  prevailing  conception  expressed  their 
feelings  in  words,  and  were  doomed  to  be  deemed  by  their 
fellows  eccentric  or  heretical.  Many  more,  awed  into  silence 
and  apparent  submission  by  an  unsympathetic,  self-opin- 
ionated and  occasionally  inconsiderate  and  cruel  public 
sentiment,  concealed  their  convictions  and  became  deceitful 
and  hypocritical,  while  others  still,  because  they  found  them- 
selves out  of  sympathy  with,  perhaps,  no  more  than  the 
superficial  phases  of  the  beliefs  about  them,  came  to  iden- 
tify these  with  the  whole  underlying  system  of  religion,  and, 
after  a  time,  began  to  dislike  and  oppose  this  also.  An  evi- 
dence of  the  frequency  of  this  attitude  was  afforded  by  the 
saying,  as  if  it  were  generally  true,  which  was  by  no  means 
the  case,  that  "ministers'  sons," — i.en  the  sons  of  those 
typically  puritan — "turn  out  badly. " 


PURITANISM  163 

The  great  mistake  of  the  Puritans  arose  from  their  not 
recognizing  the  obligation  on  their  part  to  make  a  right 
course  of  life,  or  themselves  as  representatives  of  it,  seem 
attractive.  An  endeavor  to  do  this  they  would  have  con- 
sidered not  only  frivolous  but  demoralizing.  Because  they 
perceived,  as  all  thinkers  do,  what  has  already  been  acknowl- 
edged in  this  volume, — that  bodily  desires  are  the  foremost 
to  exert  their  influence  and  the  easiest  to  fulfill,  they  seem 
to  have  argued  that  the  desires  of  the  mind  are  in  all  regards 
the  opposite,  and  that,  therefore,  one  who  is  to  be  trained 
to  follow  their  promptings  on  all  occasions  must  be  habit- 
uated in  his  youth  to  do  what  at  first  appears  as  undesirable 
and  as  difficult  as  possible.  This  explains  the  family  dis- 
cipline where  children  were  not  allowed  to  talk,  or  to  play, 
or  even,  at  times,  to  occupy  seats  in  the  presence  of  their 
elders.  It  explains  the  school  drill  intentionally  made  monot- 
onous where  all  the  pupils  had  to  stand  up  and  toe  a  line  or 
sit  straight  on  benches  made  unnecessarily  uncomfortable. 
It  explains  the  religious  life  with  its  technical  catechisms, 
cant  phrases,  and  long  church  services  only  slightly  relieved 
by  anything  resembling  music,  in  a  building  full  of  frost- 
laden  breath  and  unheated  in  even  the  coldest  weather.  It 
explains,  too,  why  almost  every  effort  that  was  put  forth  to 
lead  men  toward  the  right  was  conducted  by  those  thinking 
it  their  duty  to  make  their  faces  look  as  sour  and  stern  as 
human  muscles  could  permit.  What  was  there  in  conditions 
like  these  that  could  appeal  to  mental  or  rational  desire  and 
strengthen  it  so  as  to  enable  it  to  subordinate  bodily  desire? 
The  truth  is  that  the  Puritans  did  not  recognize  some  of  the 
most  imperative  requirements  of  human  nature.  A  mini- 
mum of  this  recognition  would  have  speedily  turned  all  the 
serious  energy  of  their  nature,  for  which  our  age  so  justly 
honors  them,  into  wellsprings  of  joy  flowing  forth  to  a  life 
about  them,  filled  with  the  flowering  and  fruitage  of  beauty 
and  goodness. 

The  second  of  the  ways  in  which,  on  page  157,  it  was  said 
that  a  man  comes  to  apprehend  what  is  desirable  was 
through  experience  as  derived  from  experiment, — in  other 
words,  through  saying  and  doing  what  one  has  observed 
that  others  say  and  do. 

Few  facts  are  more  universally  recognized  than  that  any 
action,  right  or  wrong,  tends  to  repeat  itself.  Men  usually 
do  again  what  they  have  once  done.    Not  so  often,  but  quite 


164  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

frequently,  they  also  refrain  from  attempting  what  they 
have  never  tried.  These  tendencies  are  all  the  more  apt  to 
be  manifested  when  that  which  they  have  done  has  given 
them  pleasure  and  satisfaction,  or  when,  for  any  reason, 
that  which  they  have  not  done,  even  though  it  may  promise 
some  degree  of  these,  threatens  to  bring  with  it  also  some 
degree  of  pain  and  peril. 

Such  statements  apply  especially  to  actions  that  have  to 
do  with  morality.  One  who  has  never  indulged  in  falsehood, 
drunkenness,  theft,  or  other  like  practices,  finds  it  com- 
paratively easy  not  to  do  so.  Merely  a  suggestion  given  by 
his  own  judgment,  or  conscience,  or  what  he  knows  to  be  the 
opinions  of  others,  is  enough  to  keep  him  from  conduct  of 
which  he  feels  that  good  morals  would  not  approve.  Even 
if  this  do  not  keep  him  from  it,  the  result  is  usually  due  to  the 
persuasions  of  his  comrades,  rather  than  to  the  promptings 
of  his  own  desires.  These  conditions,  however,  are  often 
very  suddenly  changed  after  a  single  indulgence  in  any  form 
of  vice  or  crime.  So  far  as  concerns  this  form,  the  repetition 
of  it  becomes  exceedingly  easy.  For  one  thing,  the  person 
committing  the  deed  has  learned  from  experience  that  the 
desire  which  prompted  his  wrong  action  is  one  that  this 
action  could  gratify — not  as  fully  as  he  had  expected,  but, 
at  least  in  part.  Moreover,  he  has  usually  learned  that  the 
risk  that  he  feared  to  run  is  not  as  great  as  he  had  supposed, 
and  this  because  he  finds  that  the  danger  is  more  or  less 
remote.  The  same  is  true  of  most  of  the  dangers  connected 
with  wrongdoing.  The  results  are  not  at  once  apparent. 
To  the  firmest  believers  in  hell,  there  is,  at  least,  one  consola- 
tion. It  always  seems  a  long  way  off.  So  with  retribution 
in  this  world.  As  a  rule,  a  lie  is  not  immediately  detected; 
what  is  stolen  is  not  at  once  missed;  an  intoxicated  man  can 
get  to  bed  quite  a  number  of  times  without  being  found  out. 
All  the  conditions  are  just  what  they  would  be  if  some 
demon  had  arranged  a  trap  in  such  a  way  as  gradually  to 
entice  one  where  his  ultimate  destruction  would  not  be 
readily  foreseen. 

Besides  this — and  it  is  a  very  important  factor  in  the 
situation — guilt  is  a  matter  determined  by  quality  and  not 
quantity.  A  man  who  has  unmistakably  done  a  little  wrong 
feels  instinctively  that  others  will  be  apt  to  class  him  with 
those  who  have  done  some  great  wrong.  He  feels  that  he 
has  crossed  a  border  line  separating  the  good  from  the  bad; 


E  VIL  EXPERIENCE  CA  USES  E  VIL  1 65 

and  is  apt  to  act  upon  the  supposition  that  he  will  incur  no 
additional  risk  if  he  keep  on  in  the  same  direction.  At  least, 
this  conception,  and  the  suggestions  connected  with  it,  are  so 
impressed  upon  his  mind  that  his  ability  to  resist  any  strong 
temptation  to  repeat  this  form  of  wrongdoing  is  immensely 
weakened.  These  are  facts  that  a  very  slight  knowledge  of 
the  history  of  vice  and  crime  can  amply  illustrate.  It  is 
not  strange,  therefore,  that  many  young  people,  and  un- 
doubtedly the  vast  majority  of  them,  and  an  equal  propor- 
tion of  older  ones  intent  upon  influencing  others  for  good, 
hold  the  theory,  and  carry  it  out  in  practice  that, 

The  time  to  stop  sinning 
Is  ere  its  beginning. 

To  this  theory,  more  than  to  any  other  cause,  many  are 
accustomed  to  attribute  all  the  integrity,  trustworthiness, 
and  morality  which  subsequently  have  made  their  careers 
a  success.  We  all  believe  in  reformation;  but  we  all  know 
that  anything  that  has  been  patched  up  is  never  quite  as 
satisfactory  as  if  it  had  never  needed  repair.  Wild  oats 
cannot  be  sown  without  a  waste  of  time  and  a  dissipation  of 
energy,  and,  to  say  nothing  of  the  danger  of  reaping  a 
harmful  harvest,  life  is  too  short  for  the  waste,  and  too  much 
in  need  of  effort,  for  men  to  afford  to  throw  away  the  energy. 
It  is  no  wonder,  in  view  of  these  facts,  that  many  a  person 
who  considers  himself  to  have  charge  of  the  moral  as  well  as 
the  mental  development  of  others  should  become  interested 
in  devising  means  to  mold  their  conduct,  so  that,  in  spite 
of  their  own  bodily  tendencies,  they  shall  have  experience 
of  the  good,  and,  after  having  had  it,  shall  desire  it,  and 
continue  to  practice  it.  This  conception  is  at  the  basis  of 
many  of  the  methods  prevalent  in  families,  schools,  and 
churches.  "Train  up  a  child,"  said  Solomon  (Prov.  xxii, 
6),  "in  the  way  he  should  go:  and  when  he  is  old,  he  will 
not  depart  from  it."  There  certainly  is  much  truth  in  this. 
But  what  is  meant  by  "the  way  "  in  which  "he  should  go?" 
Many  a  boy,  most  scrupulously  trained  to  go  through  with 
all  the  external  forms  that  are  supposed  to  express  what 
is  most  pure  in  the  family,  upright  in  the  state,  and  re- 
ligious in  the  church,  has  departed  so  far  from  what  these 
forms  are  intended  and  supposed  to  represent  as  to  become 
notoriously  immoral,  dishonest,  and  depraved. 


1 66  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

In  such  cases,  what  was  there  in  the  training  that  was 
lacking?  The  reader  will  anticipate  the  answer  that  best 
accords  with  what  has  already  been  said  in  this  volume. 
The  kind  of  life  which  this  person  was,  in  his  youth,  forced 
to  live  did  not  commend  itself  to  him  as  desirable.  No 
matter  how  much  else  may  be  accomplished,  all  is  in  vain 
unless  the  training  has  been  successful  in  producing  this 
latter  effect.  The  child  is  to  be  taught  to  be  clean,  neat, 
gentle,  kindly,  polite,  cautious,  industrious,  studious,  obe- 
dient, truthful,  honest,  humble,  reverent,  and  to  manifest 
other  traits  of  a  similar  kind.  But  he  needs  to  be  trained, 
not  merely  to  be  or  to  do  certain  right  things,  but  to  wish  to 
be  or  to  do  them,  and  to  take  satisfaction  in  what  he  is  or 
does.  The  result  cannot  be  obtained  merely  through  making 
the  pupil  repeat  prescribed  actions.  Such  a  course  by  itself 
alone  frequently  has  the  opposite  effect.  Many  a  boy  runs 
away  from  home,  plays  truant  at  school,  and  even  to  the  end 
of  his  life  refuses  to  go  into  a  religious  service— because  of  the 
conscientious  and  scrupulous  efforts  that  others  have  put 
forth  when  he  was  young  to  mold  his  character  in  accord- 
ance, not  with  what  his  own  better  self  can  be  led  to  desire, 
but  in  accordance  merely  with  what  they  themselves  desire. 
Even  when  he  accepts  the  routine  to  which  he  has  been 
trained,  he  may  do  this  as  a  matter  merely  of  form,  leading 
him  to  become  a  hypocrite  in  whatever  family,  society,  or 
sect  he  may  find  himself.  No  results  having  any  permanent 
effect  upon  conduct  are  obtainable  unless  they  have  been  so 
directed  as  to  develop  and  strengthen  mental  desires.  Of 
course,  to  influence  these  desires  is  no  easy  matter.  It  re- 
quires a  degree  of  though tfulness,  ingenuity,  and  imagination 
apparently  beyond  the  possibility  of  large  numbers  of  the 
parents,  teachers,  or  preachers  who  undertake  it.  But  the 
main  reason  why  most  of  them  fail  is  because  they  fail  to 
apprehend  its  requirements.  Of  course,  not  apprehending 
these,  they  cannot  be  expected  to  fulfill  them. 

Before  passing  on  to  consider  the  chief  ways  of  fulfilling 
them,  let  us  notice  a  concluding  subject  already  promised 
for  this  chapter, — that  is,  the  third  of  the  ways  in  which, 
on  page  157  it  was  said  that  the  mind  comes  to  apprehend 
what  is  desirable,  namely,  through  hearsay  or  through  re- 
ceiving information  imparted  by  others.  No  one  can  doubt 
that  any  desire,  especially  a  higher  desire,  can  be  greatly 
strengthened  by  being  shown  to  accord  with  the  discoveries 


LEARNING  FROM  INFORMATION  1 67 

and  promptings  of  intelligence.  What  is  intelligence  for, 
except  to  act  as  a  guide  to  action, — of  which  moral  action  is 
merely  one  important  department  ?  No  wonder  that  a  man's 
conduct  should  be  supposed  to  be  determined  largely  by  his 
general  education  and  his  special  information. 

This  is  a  subject  that  does  not  need  to  be  argued.  But, 
in  connection  with  it,  one  should  always  bear  in  mind  that 
information  designed  to  affect  moral  character  must  be  so 
imparted  as  to  influence  mental  desire,  and  so  received  as  to 
develop  it.  The  most  intelligent  are  by  no  means,  for  this 
reason,  the  most  moral.  The  best  informed  by  no  means 
lead  the  best  regulated  lives.  Who  have  a  more  accurate 
knowledge  of  the  evils  resulting  from  an  excessive  use  of 
alcohol  or  narcotics  than  have  physicians?  Yet  statistics 
show  that  these  belong  to  the  very  class  most  given  to  such 
excesses.  Everyone  who  reads  even  a  few  books  ought  to 
know  that  some  of  the  worse  characters  mentioned  in  history 
have  been  among  those  most  fully  informed  with  reference 
to  right  and  wrong,  and  most  thoroughly  fitted  to  argue  out 
the  consequences  of  each;  and  that  some  of  the  best  charac- 
ters have  received  only  a  minimum  of  either  instruction  or 
mental  training.  They  have  become  what  they  were,  so 
far  as  one  can  make  out,  not  so  much  because  of  what  they 
have  been  informed  as  of  what  they  have  observed  and  ex- 
perienced while  associating  with  good  people  whose  ex- 
amples they  have  followed.  More  than  this,  it  may  be 
said  that  very  often  the  influence  of  these  people  for  good 
has  been  in  proportion  to  their  lack  of  knowledge,  or  of  con- 
fidence in  the  effects  of  mere  learning  or  logic.  The  writer 
has  known  intimately  three  large  families  every  member  of 
which  has  passed  through  life  with  an  unimpeachable  moral 
record.  Yet.  in  all  these  families,  the  apparent  lack,  when 
the  children  were  young,  of  instruction  imparted  merely  as 
instruction,  was  severely  criticized  by  the  parents  of  certain 
other  families,  half  of  whose  members,  when  they  grew  up, 
became  a  disgrace  to  them.  This  is  no  argument  against 
instruction;  but  it  is  the  strongest  kind  of  an  argument 
against  supposing  that  this  is  all  the  influence,  or  the  main 
influence,  that  needs  to  be  exerted. 

When  we  consider  that  the  important  matter  is  that  the 
instruction,  whether  imparted  by  information  or  argument, 
should  be  of  such  a  nature  as  to  influence  desire,  it  is  re- 
markable how  few  of  the  methods  used  now  in  our  homes 


168  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

and  schools  are  directed  specifically  to  the  attaining  of  this 
end.  It  seems  to  be  supposed  by  many  that  a  statement  or 
picture  once  lodged  in  the  mind  stays  still  like  a  package 
put  on  a  shelf  in  a  closet,  never  changing  form,  and  never 
having  any  different  effect  or  significance  than  before  it  was 
placed  there.  They  would  be  more  nearly  right  if  they 
supposed  the  mind  to  be  like  an  overflowing  caldron  filled 
with  seething  material  into  which  all  things  entering  fall,  to 
be  caught  up  by  the  mass  and  borne  about  and  away  in  the 
current  of  its  own  tendency.  The  tendency  has  been  shown  in 
Chapter  III.  to  be  determined  predominantly  sometimes  by 
bodily,  and  sometimes  by  mental  desire.  Because,  therefore, 
of  what  desires  are  in  themselves,  and  also  because  they  can 
be  influenced  by  more  than  one  agency,  it  is  illogical  to 
assign  to  information  as  large,  not  to  say  as  exclusive,  a 
degree  of  influence,  as  is  sometimes  attributed  to  it. 

This  fact  needs  particularly  to  be  called  to  the  attention 
of  those  whose  conception  of  the  influence  of  information  is 
confined  to  that  which  affects  merely  the  conscious  as  dis- 
tinguished from  the  unconscious  mind  as  described  on 
pages  1 59  and  1 60.  If  there  were  no  unconscious  processes  of 
thought  determining  the  tendencies  and  associations  of  ideas 
that  have  an  effect  not  merely  on  speculative  imaginings, 
but  on  logical  inferences,  then  one  could  always  know  before- 
hand how  the  mind  would  be  affected  by  information.  In 
that  case,  if  a  man  were  told,  and  believed  it  to  be  true,  that 
to  do  something  would  bring  on  a  particular  form  of  disease, 
he  would  not  do  it.  In  that  case,  if  he  were  told,  and  be- 
lieved it  to  be  true,  that  to  do  something  else  would  cure 
a  disease  that  he  had,  he  would  do  it.  But  this  is  not  the 
way  in  which  human  beings  act.  Within  their  minds  are 
drifts  of  thought,  controlled  subconsciously  by  all  sorts  of 
desires;  and  these  manifest  a  constant  tendency  to  emerge 
into  consciousness  with  sufficient  strength  to  overwhelm 
everything — no  matter  how  wise — that  may  be  opposed  to 
them. 

Where  information  is  imparted,  therefore,  it  may  or  may 
not  have  the  good  effect  which  it  is  intended  to  produce. 
Its  having  this  effect  depends  upon  two  things, — upon  the 
strength  and  tendency  of  right  desires  in  the  mind  that  re- 
ceives the  information;  and  upon  the  ability  of  those  who 
impart  it  to  connect  it  with  influences  that  shall  awaken 
and  energize  these  right  desires.    It  is  sometimes  supposed 


INFORMATION  THAT  INCREASES  VICE  1 69 

that  to  keep  one  informed  of  the  character  and  results  of 
vice  and  crime,  will  necessarily  cause  him  to  refrain  from 
indulging  in  them.  But  no  matter  what  may  have  been  the 
purpose  of  giving  such  information,  it  will  not  benefit  the 
hearer  unless  it  has  aroused  in  him  desires  antagonistic  to 
the  courses  described.  Otherwise,  the  information  with 
the  inferences  and  suggestions  associated  with  it,  may  be 
developed  in  connection  with  the  promptings  of  lower 
desires. 

Having  said  this  much,  it  is  hardly  necessary  to  point  out 
to  any  one  capable  of  drawing  logical  deductions  the  appall- 
ing mistakes  that  are  made  in  some  modern  methods  of  im- 
parting information,  instruction,  and  even  entertainment. 
Few  newspapers  fail  occasionally  to  contain  graphic  repre- 
sentations to  the  imagination  of  the  details  of  crime.  Many 
have  been  committed  by  the  young,  and  have  not  infre- 
quently been  suggested  to  them  by  what  they  have  read  of 
the  crimes  of  others.  Large  numbers  of  offenses  result  from 
acting  outwardly  what  has  been  acted  inwardly  over  and 
over  again  in  imagination,  excited  by  suggestions  derived 
from  what  has  been  read.  It  is  a  well-established  fact  that 
many  a  story  about  a  bandit,  burglar,  or  suicide,  notwith- 
standing the  dangers  and  horrors  described,  far  from  deter- 
ring certain  people  from  a  like  experience,  cause  them  to  seek 
to  imitate  it.  The  example  seems  to  produce  a  fatal  fascina- 
tion like  that  of  the  charm  of  a  snake  upon  its  victim.  Those 
responsible  for  government  who  know  so  little  about  the 
workings  of  the  human  mind  as  not  to  prohibit  by  law  the 
publication  of  these  details,  can  scarcely  be  too  strongly 
condemned.  But  someone  may  ask:  "Would  you  interfere 
with  the  liberty  of  the  press  ? "  Certainly,  just  as  one  would 
with  the  liberty  of  an  individual — a  drunkard,  a  crimi- 
nal, a  maniac — in  case  he  has  become  a  menace  to  the 
community. 

The  same  principle  applies  to  making  public  the  details 
of  vice — though  this  is  done  less  in  newspapers  than  in 
novels,  plays,  and  moving  pictures.  But  would  you  inter- 
fere, someone  asks,  with  the  delineation  of  any  phases  of  life, 
whether  good  or  bad?  Are  not  all  these  necessary  in  or- 
der to  meet  artistic  requirements?  Should  we  restrict  and 
cripple  art?  Any  one  who  talks  in  this  way,  and  does  so 
supposing  that  what  he  says  furnishes  an  argument  against 
any  legitimate  conclusion  from  the  line  of  thought  that  is 


1 70  E  THICS  AND  NAT  URAL  LA  W 

here  being  presented,  either  knows  little  about  art  or  cares 
little  about  morals.  If  he  knew  much  about  art,  he  would 
know  that,  at  its  best,  it  is  not  merely  an  imitation  of  nature, 
but  an  embodiment,  through  the  use  of  the  forms  of  nature, 
of  an  ideal;  and  that  an  ideal  is  a  mental  result,  always  at- 
tained through  manifesting,  in  some  way,  the  supremacy  of 
the  mental  over  the  bodily.  If  he  cared  about  morals,  he 
would  care  for  subjects  necessarily  suggestive  of  conceptions, 
and  representative  of  conduct,  of  a  high  mental  quality. 
As  things  are  in  our  country  to-day,  it  would  be  feasible  for 
a  maliciously  disposed  neighbor  to  ruin  a  young  person  just 
approaching  maturity  merely  by  lending  him  evilly  selected 
novels  and  taking  him  to  evilly  selected  theaters  and  picture 
shows. 

In  no  way  could  character  be  more  debased,  except,  per- 
haps, by  having  him  study  a  textbook  on  sex  hygiene  in  a 
public  school.  Not  that  any  person  should  be  kept  in  igno- 
rance of  what  he  ought  to  know,  but  that  the  lessons  upon  a 
subject  such  as  this  should  be  made  as  brief,  and  studied  as 
little  and  seldom,  as  possible.  Twenty  minutes  spent,  once  a 
term,  by  one  in  whom  a  pupil  has  confidence,  in  briefly  tell- 
ing facts,  and  a  short  visit,  once  or  twice  in  a  lifetime,  to  a 
hospital  museum  would  give  all  the  information  needed  by 
the  ordinary  young  person  with  reference  to  the  subject. 
There  is  no  need  of  making  an  intimate  acquaintance  of  a 
smallpox  patient  in  order  to  learn  to  avoid  catching  his  dis- 
ease. The  same  is  true  with  reference  to  more  dangerous 
diseases.  There  are  certain  subjects  concerning  which  the 
less  that  is  said,  or  thought,  or  suggested,  the  better;  and 
in  any  case,  the  surest  remedy  for  the  evils  attendant  upon 
them,  is  not  to  be  obtained  through  the  understanding. 

There  is  such  a  thing  as  being  too  well  informed.  What  is 
needed  is  something  that  shall  set  into  operation  a  higher 
desire.  Unless  this  be  done,  all  the  animating  possibilities 
of  thought  may  act  there  as  fertilizing  agencies  act  upon  a 
seed  and  develop  a  crop  of  inconceivable  troubles.  It  is 
true  that  a  concentration  of  attention  upon  threatened  con- 
sequences may  repel  or  frighten  from  indulgence  certain 
persons  of  certain  temperaments.  But  in  many  it  will  be 
more  likely  to  awaken  false  conceptions  of  human  nature, 
disheartening  views  of  their  own  share  in  it,  morbid  curiosity 
with  reference  to  the  taste  of  the  forbidden  fruit  described, 
and  delusive  confidence  in  the  efficacy  of  preventives  or  of 


INFORMATION  THAT  INCREASES  VICE  171 

cures  prescribed  after  infection.  Not  one,  if  influenced 
through  the  understanding  alone,  will  be  inspired  to  those 
exalted  and  purifying  desires  which  alone  can  assure  safety 
not  only  to  body  but  to  soul. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

KEEPING    THE     MIND'S    DESIRES    UPPERMOST    IN    COURTSHIP 
AND  MARRIAGE 

The  Family  has  Bodily  and  Mental  Relations  to  the  Development  of 
Character — The  Bodily  should  not  be  Emphasized  Unduly,  though 
Public  Sentiment  against  Marrying  Physical  Degenerates  is 
Healthful — Mental  Requirements  should  also  be  Regarded,  and 
Anticipated  in  Education — Courtship,  Friendship,  and  Love — 
The  Qualities  Attracting  those  who  Fall  in  Love — Risks  Attending 
Merely  Bodily  or  Merely  Mental  Attraction — Methods  of  Avoid- 
ing these  Risks — Effects  of  Sentimentality,  as  in  Novels,  etc.,  as 
Contrasted  with  Rationality,  Especially  as  Exerted  by  Parents — 
The  Cure  for  Unsatisfactory  Marriage — Injurious  Representations 
of  much  Modern  Literature — Evils  Wrought  by  Forbidding  all 
Divorce — Good  Accomplished  by  Resisting  Tendencies  to  it,  in 
Order  to  Balance  the  Bodily  by  the  Mental. 

IN  accordance  with  the  plan  indicated  on  page  156,  we 
shall  now  consider  the  practical  applications  of  our 
subject,  not,  as  in  the  preceding  chapter,  in  their  gen- 
eral relations  to  all  actions,  but  in  their  special  relations  to 
particular  actions.  In  doing  this  it  is  natural  to  begin  with 
those  primary  and  intimate  relations  of  life  that  are  found 
in  the  family.  The  family,  consisting  of  father,  mother,  and 
child,  constitutes  the  earliest  form  of  human  organization; 
and  it  always  has  been,  and,  despite  efforts,  especially  at 
the  present  day,  to  minimize  its  prominence,  it  always  will 
continue  to  be,  the  most  important.  The  object  of  the 
family  is  the  bodily  and  mental  development  of  the  child. 
What  the  child  finally  becomes  is  determined  partly  by 
that  which  he  inherits  physically  at  birth,  and  partly  by 
that  which  surrounds  and  influences  him  psychically  during 
his  childhood.  This  is  not  to  say  that  with  his  physical 
nature  he  may  not  inherit  also  certain  psychical  traits;  or 
that  with  his  psychical  nature  he  may  not  acquire  from  en- 
vironment certain  physical  traits.    It  is  merely  to  say  that 

172 


INFLUENCE  OF  HEREDITY  173 

the  primary  source  of  influence  in  heredity  is  physical  and 
in  environment  is  psychical. 

The  reason  why  attention  is  directed  to  this  fact  here  is 
because  of  the  tendency  in  our  times  to  emphasize  unduly — 
and  sometimes  even  exclusively — the  influence  of  heredity. 
Eugenic  requirements — i.e.,  requirements  determined  by  the 
physical  health  or  condition  of  those  about  to  marry — are, 
of  course,  extremely  important.  So  far  as  feasible,  the  laws 
of  the  State  should  prevent  the  union  of  those  afflicted  with 
diseases  of  body  or  mind,  such  as  are  known  to  be  inheritable, 
or  with  those  infections  following  indulgence  in  vice,  which, 
though  apparently  cured,  leave  impurity  in  the  blood  liable 
to  be  communicated  to  one's  offspring,  and  to  develop  in 
these  into  idiocy,  blindness,  and  other  forms  of  infirmity. 
With  reference  to  the  risks  incurred  by  marriage  in  such 
cases,  because  their  beginnings  can  be  easily  concealed, 
young  people  ought  to  be  fully  informed ;  nor  is  any  worthy 
purpose  served  by  the  modern  novel  or  moving  picture  that 
represents  a  drunkard-hero  or  a  harlot-heroine  as  marrying 
a  high-minded  girl  or  a  pure-minded  man,  and  the  couple  liv- 
ing happily  ever  afterward.  Quite  often  the  laws  of  nature 
prevent  such  people  from  living  happily;  and  only  unreflect- 
ing sentimentality  could  fail  to  recognize  why  nature,  in  pre- 
venting their  happiness,  is  acting,  on  the  whole,  humanely 
and  wisely.  It  is  emphasizing  for  the  young,  as  might  be 
possible  in  no  other  way,  the  extreme  importance  of  fulfill- 
ing always  the  requirements  of  higher  as  contrasted  with 
lower  desire. 

But,  as  said  before,  what  the  child  becomes  is  determined 
not  only  by  what  he  inherits  physically,  but  by  what,  in  the 
earliest  years  after  birth,  surrounds  him  and  influences  him 
psychically.  The  contribution  to  moral  character  of  the 
latter,  too,  is  fully  as  important  as  the  former.  The  human 
mind  is  never  so  susceptible  to  influence ;  so  quick  to  learn 
the  lessons  or  to  acquire  the  habits,  that  others  can  impart, 
as  during  its  first  fifteen  years  of  earthly  life.  The  most  that 
follows  subsequently  is  little  more  than  a  process,  able  to 
finish  and  perfect,  but  not  to  change,  the  general  tendency. 
A  clear  inference  from  this  fact  is  that,  before  marriage, 
those  who  may  become  parents,  especially  the  mother  who 
must  necessarily  be  brought  into  the  most  continuous  and 
intimate  relations  with  the  child,  need  more  or  less  prepara- 
tion for  the  work.    The  traits  essential  for  success  in  this 


174  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

are  love  for  human  nature,  hope  for  it,  and  faith  in  it.  But 
where  can  our  young  people  acquire  these,  or  begin  to  ac- 
quire them?  Certainly  not  in  such  families  or  churches  as 
are  permeated  by  an  influence  that  can  appropriately  be 
termed  exclusive  or  aristocratic;  or  in  such  schools  or  col- 
leges as  are  dominated  by  class  spirit,  fraternity  or  sorority 
snobbishness,  or  a  general  atmosphere  of  hazing,  even  if  the 
latter  assume  no  meaner  form  than  ostentatiously  avoiding 
or  insulting  an  acquaintance,  or  walking  by  on  a  dry  path 
from  which  others  have  been  shoved  into  slush  and  mud. 
Think  of  these  things  as  a  training  for  parenthood !  As  if 
one  could  not  be  loyal  to  one's  own  family,  church,  society, 
or  class  and  still  manifest  the  traits  of  a  gentleman  or  a 
lady !  As  if  the  mental  desire  prompting  to  a  revelation  of 
the  spirit  of  sympathy  and  service  should  ever  be  subordi- 
nated to  a  purely  bodily  desire  to  elbow  another  into  dis- 
credit or  discomfort  in  order  to  make  a  public  display  of 
one's  own  egoistic  narrowness  and  selfishness!  Of  course, 
such  things  as  have  been  mentioned  involve  comparatively 
slight  deviations  from  the  right,  but,  like  little  straws  that 
show  the  direction  of  the  wind,  little  offenses  show  the  ten- 
dencies of  the  spirit, — tendencies,  too,  that,  if  they  be  not 
checked,  may  develop  into  offenses  almost  infinitely  great. 
After  young  people  have  left  school — and,  very  frequently 
too,  before  this — they  are  supposed  to  have  reached  the 
period  of  courtship.  At  this  time  they  are  apt  to  become 
conscious  of  being  called  upon  to  solve  a  very  perplexing 
question, — perplexing,  because  it  is  necessarily  complicated. 
Courtship  is  introductory  to  marriage;  and  marriage,  as 
indicated  on  page  3,  is  the  result  of  a  desire  on  the  part  of 
one  individual  for  union  with  another,  a  desire  that  may  be 
bodily  or  mental,  or  both;  and  when  both,  either  the  bodily 
or  the  mental  tendency  may  dominate.  The  desire  when 
wholly  bodily  is  universally  recognized  to  be  more  or  less 
lacking  in  that  which  should  characterize  a  rational  being. 
The  desire  that  is  wholly  mental  leads  to  what  is  termed 
friendship;  and  the  psychical  unity — the  agreement  in 
thought,  emotion,  and  action  between  two  minds  brought 
together  in  this  relationship — is  often  as  nearly  perfect  as 
anything  in  this  world  can  be.  The  desire  that  is  partly 
bodily  and  partly  mental, — partly  owing,  that  is,  to  in- 
herited and  temperamental  traits  and  tendencies,  and  partly 
to  psychical  qualities   and    acquirements — is    that   which 


PRECAUTIONS  BEFORE  MARRYING  175 

leads  to  what  is  usually  described  as  "falling  in  love."  In 
this  condition,  if,  in  the  desire,  the  bodily  dominate,  it  is  a 
lower  form  of  love  than  if  the  mental  dominate — lower,  not 
merely  theoretically,  as  a  matter  of  philosophic  estimation, 
but  practically,  as  a  matter  of  personal  experience.  Were  it 
otherwise,  it  would  be  impossible  for  those  who  have  lived 
for  years  in  circumstances  where  mental  desire  alone  could 
be  fully  satisfied — with  invalid  marriage  partners,  perhaps, 
or,  especially  in  youth,  with  intimates  of  their  own  sex — 
to  attribute  to  these  years  a  happiness  as  nearly  complete  as 
seems  possible  in  any  earthly  relationship,  and  to  speak  of 
them,  notwithstanding  subsequent  marriage  experience,  as 
affording  the  only  conception  that  they  have  ever  attained 
of  the  possibilities  of  true  love. 

In  case  the  two  who  "fall  in  love"  be  of  different  sexes, 
there  can  scarcely  fail  to  be,  as  society  is  now  constituted, 
a  suggestion  of  marriage;  and  marriage,  considered  either  as 
a  civil  or  a  religious  contract,  renders  it  important  for  those 
who  plan  for  it  to  be  able  to  determine  what  are  the  qualities 
in  another  that  attract  them,  and  whether  these  are  qualities 
that  are  likely  to  attract  them  permanently.  Here  is  the 
source  of  the  perplexity  that  has  been  mentioned.  People 
often  misrepresent  themselves  to  those  with  whom  they 
become  comparatively  intimate.  They  may  do  this  con- 
sciously, rouging  their  cheeks,  dyeing  their  hair,  living  on 
borrowed  money,  and  pretending  an  interest  and  enthusiasm 
in  subjects  for  which  they  care  nothing;  or  unconsciously, 
influenced  by  a  subtle  wish  to  conciliate  or  please  others, 
because  they  are  weak  or  vain,  or  only  too  genial  or  yielding 
in  disposition.  Even  when  there  is  no  misrepresentation  on 
the  part  of  either  of  two  persons  thus  interested  in  each 
other,  both  may  often  experience  great  difficulty  in  dissect- 
ing the  actions  of  their  own  minds,  and  in  arriving  at  any 
intelligent  conclusion  with  reference  to  what  it  is  that  really 
constitutes  that  which  they  term  their  love. 

Is  it  bodily  alone,  or  mental  alone,  or  is  it  both  ?  and,  if  so, 
which  of  the  two  is  uppermost?  One  is  fascinated,  perhaps, 
by  the  expressions  of  a  face,  or  by  the  movements  of  a  form; 
and  this  is  as  it  should  be.  But  are  mere  externals  like  these 
the  only  things  that  attract  him?  A  snake  fascinates,  and 
how  is  a  man  in  love  to  know  that  the  feeling  which  he  has 
is  of  any  higher  quality  than  that  of  the  snake's  victim? 
Even  if  it  be  recognized  that  the  effect  of  the  fascinating 


176  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

influence  is  distinctly  stimulating  to  mental  activity,  so,  it 
may  be  said,  is  the  effect,  sometimes,  of  tea,  opium,  or  whis- 
ky, and  the  main  effect  of  each  is  undoubtedly  bodily. 
On  the  other  hand,  suppose  that  one  find  himself  in  com- 
plete agreement  with  the  thoughts  or  emotions  of  another, 
is  psychical  agreement — the  fulfilment  of  mental  desire — 
all  that  is  needed  in  order  to  secure  an  ideal  marriage? 
Those  who  have  attended  boarding  schools  that  are  apt  to 
tumble  together  boys,  at  least,  so  that  they  have  experience 
of  many  different  room  mates  and  bedfellows,  know  that 
there  are  some  good  friends  who  are  not  bodily  attractive, 
and,  on  the  contrary,  that  there  are  some  not  particularly 
good  friends  who  are  so.  What  if  a  man  after  marriage 
should  discover  that  his  wife  belonged  to  one  of  these  classes? 
For  a  constant  companion,  it  would  not  be  ideal  to  have  her 
belong  to  either.  The  condition,  moreover,  would  be  one 
that  could  seldom  be  cured,  because  nothing  can  change 
one's  bodily  or  mental  temperament.  An  eminent  lawyer 
over  seventy  years  of  age  once  told  the  author  that  not  one 
day  had  gone  by  since  he  had  graduated  from  college  in 
which  he  had  failed  to  write  a  letter,  or,  at  least,  some  part 
of  a  letter,  to  his  old  college  room  mate.  A  man  particu- 
larly fitted  by  temperament  and  character,  one  would  think, 
for  loyal  devotedness  in  married  life !  And  yet — though  not 
one  word  from  him  ever  justified  the  inference — his  club 
mates  used  to  say  that  he  never  seemed  to  be  thoroughly 
enjoying  his  life  except  when  his  wife  was  in  Europe  sepa- 
rated from  him  by  the  whole  width  of  the  ocean. 

Many  a  young  fellow,  in  spite  of  many  temptations,  has 
been  kept  in  the  path  of  virtue  under  the  feeling  that  he 
was  in  honor  bound  to  bring  to  his  future  wife  a  record  as 
unsullied  as  he  expected  from  her.  Providence  certainly 
seems  to  be  unnecessarily  adverse  when  dooming  such  a 
man  as  this  to  spend  a  miserable  existence  with  some  misfit 
mate.  In  view  of  such  cases,  what  ought  to  be  done  ?  Some 
have  advised  trial  marriage  that  could  be  given  up  after  a 
few  months.  But,  for  obvious  reasons,  this  plan  does  not 
seem  feasible.  Marriage  that  could  be  annulled  informally 
would  lose  much  of  its  dignity  and  importance;  and  people 
would  become  less  rather  than  more  cautious  before  engag- 
ing in  it.  Besides  this,  a  crowd  of  discarded  brides  and 
bridegrooms  contributing  tales  and  traits  that  had  been 
collected  as  a  result  of  promiscuous  experiences  of  this  sort 


PRECAUTIONS  BEFORE  MARRYING  177 

would  not  improve  any  of  the  conditions  of  society.  Pos- 
sibly, as  the  years  go  by,  there  may  come  to  be  some  arrange- 
ment supervised  by  the  families  of  the  engaged  parties 
which,  while  preventing  the  consummation  of  marriage, 
shall  afford  a  satisfactory  test  of  the  advisibility  of  more 
intimate  and  permanent  relations;  but,  at  present,  no  such 
treatment  of  the  problem  is  in  sight.  The  best  that  can  be 
done  seems  to  be  to  try  to  impress  upon  the  mind  of  every 
young  person  the  fact  that  there  is  no  menace  to  one's 
future  happiness  so  great  as  is  afforded  by  enforced  compan- 
ionship with  one  of  another  sex  who  is  not  both  bodily  and 
mentally  congenial.  For  this  reason  alone,  most  couples, 
at  the  time  when  marriage  is  suggested,  ought  to  have  sense 
enough  to  delay  it  until,  by  mutual  understanding,  they 
have  made  an  honest  and  thorough  endeavor  with  the  ut- 
most candor  to  reveal  to  one  another  the  exact  truth  with 
reference  to  their  inmost  feelings,  characteristics,  opinions, 
and  purposes. 

Nevertheless,  in  most  of  our  talks  with  the  young  in 
family  and  society,  as  well  as  in  our  novels,  poems,  plays, 
and  moving  pictures,  the  consummation  of  bliss  in  life  is 
represented  as  being  attained  by  engagement  and  marriage, 
both  of  which  are  begun  and  ended  under  the  guidance  of 
absolutely  irrational  fancy  and  whim,  without  the  slight- 
est exercise  of  wisdom  or  judgment.  Exactly  the  opposite 
ought  to  be  the  case.  Instead  of  acting  like  a  moth  about  a 
flame,  and  hastening  to  hover  around  the  object  of  attrac- 
tion, and  join  oneself  to  it  regardless  of  the  safety  of  the 
experiment,  a  man  ought  to  act  like  an  intelligent  being, 
and  examine  the  character  of  the  flame  before  he  lets  it  burn 
him.  He  ought  to  learn  all  that  he  can  about  his  charmer's 
associates,  family,  attainments,  pursuits,  and  amusements; 
and,  in  case  these  prove  unsatisfactory,  he  ought  to  avoid, 
so  far  as  he  can,  any  possibility  of  intimacy.  Few  can 
control  desires  after  time  has  been  given  them  in  which 
to  grow  strong;  but  most  of  us  can  do  so  if  we  resist  the 
beginnings  of  them.  Even  if  we  fail  to  do  this,  it  is  simply 
a  matter  of  ordinary  prudence  to  hesitate  and  investigate 
before  making  a  proposition  of  marriage.  In  connection 
with  this  subject  there  are  arguments — but  they  would  not 
be  convincing  to  people  of  our  land — in  favor  of  having  the 
parents  of  the  parties  influence  the  selection  of  the  bride  or 
bridegroom.     Seldom,  at  least,  should  they  be  left  wholly 


178  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

unconsulted.  Unless  abnormally  heartless,  they  are  natu- 
rally their  child's  best  friends ;  and  the  family  is  unfortunate 
indeed  in  which  some  of  its  different  members  do  not  con- 
fide their  heart  secrets  to  one  another.  The  writer  has 
known  of  more  than  one  large  and  interesting  household  in 
which  a  considerable  part  of  the  business  of  the  parents,  at 
one  period,  consisted  in  traveling  about  the  country  to  hunt 
up  the  personal  and  family  histories  of  those  who  had  pro- 
posed to  enter  it  through  marriage.  The  importance  of 
efforts  of  this  kind  will  not  seem  exaggerated  here  by  any 
one  acquainted  with  society  gossip,  newspaper  items,  or  the 
records  of  police  courts. 

But  if,  in  spite  of  all  precautions,  married  life  prove  un- 
satisfactory, what  then?  Shall  the  parties  who  have  been 
married  in  accordance  with  ecclesiastical  or  civil  law  be 
divorced  in  accordance  with  the  same?  To  this  question 
different  churches  and  states  in  our  own  and  in  other  coun- 
tries have  given  different  answers.  Some  have  allowed 
divorce  at  the  request  of  only  one  of  the  parties,  and  for 
only  a  single  case  of  disagreement  between  them.  Others 
have  allowed  it  in  no  case  except  where  it  can  be  proved 
that  the  marriage  vow  has  been  broken;  and  even  then, 
freedom  to  marry  again  has  been  denied  both  parties.  As 
usual,  the  wise  course  seems  to  lie  between  the  two  extremes. 
Few  things  could  be  more  injurious  in  their  influence  upon  a 
community,  more  destructive  of  good  in  the  minds  of  the 
children  of  the  families  concerned,  or  more  unexemplary  in 
the  personal  character  of  a  father  or  mother  than  for  one 
of  them  to  obtain  a  divorce,  because  of  some  transient  dis- 
agreement or  dissatisfaction,  and,  on  the  same  day,  perhaps, 
as  has  sometimes  happened  in  our  country,  to  marry 
another  for  whom  this  one  has  taken  what  may  soon  prove 
to  be  an  equally  transient  fancy.  Every  argument  in  favor, 
of  easy  divorce,  or — what  is  virtually  the  same  thing — 
"free  love,"  as  it  is  called,  as  well  as  every  case  in  which  this 
argument  influences  official  action,  emphasizes  and  makes 
more  general  the  false  conception  that  the  supreme  achieve- 
ment of  life  is  to  recognize  and  gratify  lower  rather  than 
higher  desire. 

Unfortunately,  as  applied  not  only  to  marriage,  but,  in 
connection  with  this,  to  many  other  interests,  this  false  con- 
ception, at  present,  is  quite  general.  Think  of  the  popular 
novels  and  dramas  of  the  day,  and  the  works  of  Ibsen, 


DIVORCE  179 

Sudermann,  Hauptmann,  and  others,  upon  which  so  much 
of  all  modern  literature  is  modeled.  (See  also  page  185). 
What  is  the  lesson  that  is  taught  in  most  of  them?  This, — 
that,  if  circumstances  in  life  do  not  agree  with  one's  bodily 
or  physical  comfort,  as  determined  by  his  personal  tempera- 
ment or  self -centered  preference,  then  he  should  "kick  or 
kill"  somebody.  With  such  teachings  received  and  followed; 
it  is  easy  to  explain  a  certain  weakened  moral  effect  dis- 
coverable in  our  own  times  not  only  in  family  relations,  but 
in  many  others.  These  teachings  have  more  to  do  than 
many  of  us  suspect  not  only  with  the  number  of  modern 
divorces,  but  with  the  flirtatious  vanities  that  precede  them, 
including  the  guzzling,  the  tippling,  the  gossiping,  the 
dressing  and  the  undressing,  the  indecency  of  the  dancing, 
the  vulgarity  of  the  language,  the  emptying  of  places  in 
which  serious  problems  of  life  are  discussed,  and  the  crowd- 
ing of  those  that  exploit  the  frivolous  and  the  flippant. 
The  same  influence  could  be  shown,  too,  to  have  had  not  a 
little  to  do  with  the  self-seeking,  the  injustice,  the  cruelty, 
and  the  beastliness  of  some  of  the  warfare  begun  in  191 4. 
"  Kick  or  kill"  which  is  the  teaching  of  the  literature  of  which 
we  have  been  speaking,  is  just  the  opposite  of  the  teaching 
of  the  mental,  rational,  and  spiritual  nature.  This  enjoins 
consideration  always,  and  sometimes  service  for  others,  at 
the  expense,  too,  of  frequent  self-denial,  and  not  a  little  self- 
sacrifice.  Why  should  intelligent  men,  who  should  have 
vision  enough  to  forsee  the  results  of  their  own  influence, 
join  in  an  endeavor  to  lessen  belief  in  those  higher  ideals  of 
what  life  can  do  and  be,  the  fulfillment  of  which  alone 
can  bring  satisfaction  to  the  individual  or  happiness  to  the 
community?  Why  is  it,  when  the  devil  wants  to  incarnate 
himself,  that  he  should  so  often  find  particularly  favorable 
conditions  among  the  possibilities  of  genius?  And  genius  is 
capable  of  doing  the  world  so  much  good! 

The  view  with  reference  to  divorce  that  presents  the  other 
extreme  of  opinion  is  as  objectionable  as  the  one  just  men- 
tioned; and,  strange  as  it  may  appear,  it  is  objectionable 
for  the  same  reason.  Think  for  a  moment  what  is,  and  must 
be,  the  theory  underlying  a  law  that  forbids  divorce  either 
altogether,  or  for  any  other  reason  than  adultery.  This 
theory  must  be  that  marriage  is  a  union  merely  physi- 
cal in  its  origin  and  nature  and  capable  of  being  rightly 
annulled  for  only  a  physical  or  bodily  reason.    In  this  aspect 


180  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

of  the  subject,  psychical  or  mental  considerations  may  be 
entirely  ignored.  Yet  for  one  intent  upon  keeping  the 
balance  between  bodily  and  mental  tendencies  and,  in  case 
of  need,  subordinating  the  former  to  the  latter,  it  is  possible, 
in  view  of  the  highest  interests  of  the  children  of  a  family  or 
of  other  relatives,  or,  perhaps,  of  the  offender,  that  even 
adultery  may  not  appear  to  warrant  divorce;  while,  in  view 
of  the  same  considerations,  other  offenses  having  nothing  to 
do  with  adultery  may  appear  to  warrant  it.  Man  was  not 
made  for  marriage,  but  marriage  for  man.  Any  arrange- 
ments in  life  that  can  be  unmistakably  shown  to  interfere 
with  the  happiness,  the  prosperity,  the  profit,  or  the  pros- 
pects of  any  individual  ought  to  be  made  subject  to  legal 
redress.  This  fact  does  not  excuse  legislation  allowing 
every  irresponsible  married  malcontent  to  have  his  own 
way  and  thus  satisfy  his  whim  or  fancy,  irrespective  of 
duty  to  himself  or  to  others ;  but  it  does  excuse  and  justify 
legislation  allowing  divorce  for  psychical  as  well  as  physical 
grievances.  It  is  the  right  and  duty  of  the  public,  to  say 
nothing  about  the  family  of  the  sufferer,  to  prevent  a 
woman  or  man  from  becoming  a  victim  of  one  whose  vice, 
criminality,  or  cruelty  can  be  clearly  proved.  There  would 
be  less  difficulty  than  now  seems  to  be  the  case,  in  main- 
taining, in  thought  and  practice,  the  mean  between  divorce 
made  too  easy  and  made  too  difficult,  if  the  wisdom  could 
be  recognized  of  always  deciding  such  questions  according 
to  the  principle  of  subordinating,  when  the  two  conflict, 
bodily  to  mental  requirements. 

Meantime  the  thousands  and  millions  of  those  whose 
wedded  life  has  been  not  positively  distressful,  but  only 
negatively  unsatisfactory,  should  take  consolation  in  the 
thought  that  these  conditions  have  merely  proved  marriage 
to  be  on  a  par  with  almost  everything  else  in  this  world. 
Moreover,  a  slight  acquaintance  with  the  history  of  human 
achievement  would  teach  them  that  nothing  perhaps — 
because  nothing  can  stir  one  more  deeply — is  better  fitted 
to  develop  what  is  fundamental  in  one's  mental  and  spirit- 
ual nature  than  the  experience  that  is  termed — whether  in 
or  out  of  wedlock — "disappointment  in  love."  Besides 
this,  nothing  is  better  established  than  the  fact  that  many 
who  are  not  congenial  in  early  married  life,  after  a  few  years, 
if  they  pursue  the  path  of  duty,  settle  down  into  a  sort  of 
brotherly   and  sisterly  relation,    where  each   experiences 


UNHAPPY  MARRIED  LIFE  l8l 

both  the  development  due  to  early  disappointment  and  also 
the  respect  due  to  long  continuance  in  well-doing.  One 
thing  in  the  world  is  -sure, — that  nothing  is  gained,  and 
sometimes  everything  worth  while  is  lost,  by  following  the 
tendencies  of  merely  lower  or  physical  temper  and  tempera- 
ment, and  ignoring  that  which  prompts  to  the  conscious 
and  often  conscientious  control  exercised  by  higher  mental 
and  spiritual  desire. 


CHAPTER  XIV 


KEEPING  THE  MIND  S  DESIRES  UPPERMOST  IN  FAMILY 
TRAINING 

The  Training  of  the  Child  the  Chief  Work  of  the  Family — Necessity  of 
Influencing  the  Child's  Desires  through  Love  for  Him — Through 
Hope  for  Him — Through  Faith  in  Him — Children  Associate  Mys- 
tery with  the  Prompting  of  Conscience — Importance  of  Developing 
their  Tendencies  to  Reverence  and  Aspiration — Devotion,  and 
Religious  Suggestion  in  Family  Life — Cultivation  among  the 
Children  of  Respect,  Obedience,  and  a  Sense  of  Duty — Other  Traits, 
the  Beginnings  of  which  can  be  Cultivated  in  Childhood — The  Chief 
Aim  should  be  the  Cultivation  of  Mental  Desires  which  Chastise- 
ment alone  Cannot  Accomplish — Self-control  should  be  Developed 
— Traits  Connected  with  Truthfulness  that  Need  Particular  Em- 
phasis in  Childhood — Traits  Connected  with  Purity — Importance 
of  Parents'  Gaining  and  Keeping  their  Children's  Confidence — The 
Effects  of  this  upon  both  Morals  and  Manners. 

THE  same  balancing  and,  in  case  of  need,  subordinating 
of  bodily  desire  in  conformity  to  the  expression  al 
requirements  of  mental  desire,  the  influence  of  which 
upon  the  development  of  conditions  in  courtship  and  mar- 
riage has  been  considered  in  the  preceding  chapter,  is  also 
demanded  in  the  training  of  children.  Owing  to  the  rela- 
tions in  this  between  parents  and  their  offspring,  it  is  ordi- 
narily represented,  as  in  what  is  said  of  Love  to  Man,  in 
Chapters  II.  and  VII.  in  Part  II.  of  the  Elements  of  Moral 
Science,  of  Francis  Wayland  (1798-1865),  that  the  parents, 
up  to  the  time  when  the  child  becomes  of  age,  are  under 
obligation  to  support  him,  and  to  give  him  physical,  intel- 
lectual, and  moral  training.  Moreover,  because  responsible 
for  his  actions,  they  have  a  right  to  control  him  and  them, 
and  to  receive  his  earnings.  It  is  represented  also  that  the 
child  is  under  obligation  to  manifest  obedience,  reverence, 
and  affection,  and  to  support  his  parents  in  their  old  age. 
But  how  can  these  results  be  brought  about  in  a  way  to 

182 


FAMILY  TRAINING  183 

prove  satisfactory  to  both  parties  ?  Evidently  only  through 
some  agency  that  can  influence  the  parents  on  the  one 
hand  and  the  children  on  the  other  through  first  influencing 
higher  desire.  Without  this,  parents  may  support,  educate, 
and  live  upon  the  earnings  of  their  children  in  an  incon- 
siderate and  cruel  way;  and,  if  so,  the  children  will  never 
feel  under  obligation  to  treat  a  father  or  mother  in  any 
different  way  from  that  in  which  they  themselves  have 
been  treated. 

This  is  merely  to  reiterate  the  general  conception  already 
expressed  many  times  in  these  pages.  Everyone  must  be 
inclined  to  the  right  through  being  influenced  first  to  a  right 
desire.  This  is  especially  true  in  the  case  of  children.  They 
are  less  susceptible  than  are  grown  people  to  influence 
exerted  through  the  understanding  alone.  For  this  reason 
it  is  essential  that  the  discipline  of  the  family  should  give 
particular  expression  to  the  three  methods  of  influence 
briefly  mentioned  in  the  preceding  chapter,  namely,  love, 
hope,  and  faith — love  for  the  child  as  he  is,  hope  for  what  he 
may  become,  and  faith  in  his  own  emotional  promptings  and 
intellectual  tendencies  as  agencies  fitted  to  develop  what  he 
is  into  what  he  should  be. 

These  three  are  so  important  in  dealing  not  only  with 
children  but  with  all  people,  that  a  few  words  with  reference 
to  each  will  not  be  out  of  place  here.  One  of  the  commonest 
of  human  traits,  implanted,  probably,  as  an  extension  from 
the  body  to  the  mind  of  the  impulse  of  self-preservation,  is 
a  sense  of  responsibility  for  the  guardianship  of  what  may 
be  termed  one's  own  personality.  By  this  term  is  meant 
not  his  moral  character  but  that  result  of  bodily  and  mental 
temperament,  traits,  and  tendencies  which  is  peculiar  to 
himself,  and  which  gives  a  certain  individuality  of  effect 
to  all  his  acts,  moral  or  immoral.  Some  years  ago,  after  the 
Civil  War  in  our  country,  the  author,  on  many  occasions, 
succeeded  in  getting  former  slaves  to  admit  that  before  they 
were  emancipated,  the  necessities  of  life — food,  clothing,  and 
lodging — had  been  easier  for  them  to  obtain  than  subse- 
quently; but  not  one  of  them  would  say  that  he  would  be 
willing  to  be  a  slave  again.  They  all  preferred  to  keep  their 
poverty  rather  than  to  lore  the  right  to  give  free  expression 
to  their  personality.  A  similar  feeling  seems  to  actuate 
everybody.  In  consequence  of  it,  we  all,  more  or  less  un- 
consciously, divide  the  people  about  us  into  two  classes, — 


184  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

those  who  have  the  same  feeling  as  ourselves  about  our  own 
personality,  and  those  who  have  a  different  feeling.  The 
former  of  these  we  like  and  sometimes  love.  To  the  latter 
we  are  always  indifferent,  and  sometimes  feel  hostile.  Those 
whom  we  like  invariably  pay  deference  to  our  methods  or 
manners  of  thinking,  feeling,  or  acting.  Those  whom  we  love 
go  further  than  this.  They  admire  our  methods  and 
manners,  and  not  infrequently  imitate  them.  We  have  all 
seen  children  and  older  people  whose  peculiarities  of  ex- 
pression in  face,  movement,  voice,  and  sentiment  made  them 
exceedingly  disagreeable  to  ourselves ;  and  yet  these,  appar- 
ently, were  the  very  characteristics  that  made  them  appear 
attractive  and  even  fascinating  to  someone  who  was  re- 
lated to  them,  perhaps  as  parent,  husband,  wife,  or  sweet- 
heart. This  result  was  as  it  should  be.  We  ourselves  did 
not  need  to  love  these  people;  nor  did  they  need  to  love  us. 
But  if  we  had  been  a  relative — a  parent  especially — it 
would  have  been  different ;  and  if  our  love  for  them  had  not 
come  naturally,  we  should  have  been  remiss  if  we  had  not 
tried  to  cultivate  and  express  it.  Think  of  the  young  people 
who  live  in  almost  perpetual  misery  because  they  are  not 
conscious  that  anyone  in  their  own  home  loves  them, — i.e., 
thoroughly  admires  and  appreciates  them  for  what  they  are ! 
Notice  that  this  misery  is  the  result  of  non-selfish  mental 
desire,  yearning  for  an  assurance  that  one  has  been  of  some 
use,  help,  comfort,  or  satisfaction  to  a  fellow  human  being; 
and  what  can  be  meaner  or  more  Satanic,  if  it  can  be 
avoided,  than  to  greet  the  growing  germs  of  goodness  in  such 
a  character  not  with  the  genial  influences  of  a  warm  and 
loving  heart  but  with  the  chilling  and  deadening  effects  of 
constant  faultfinding  and  correction?  A  parent  who  has 
not  sufficient  sense,  not  to  say  sensitiveness  to  the  good,  to 
welcome  with  manifest  delight  every  indication  of  a  desire 
for  love  on  the  part  of  a  child  deserves  from  him  in  old  age 
nothing  better  than  disappointment  and  desertion. 

This  suggests  the  second  method  of  parental  influence  of 
which  mention  was  made  on  page  183,  namely,  hope.  Noth- 
ing can  prove  more  effective  in  developing  moral  character 
than  this.  Whatever  may  be  said  of  parents,  it  is  a  question 
whether  anyone  should  be  employed  as  a  teacher,  or  licensed 
as  a  preacher,  whose  optimism  does  not  overbalance  his 
pessimism.  As  for  the  systems  of  instruction,  either  in 
churches  or  schools,  that  are  based  upon  a  pessimistic  con- 


HAVING  HOPE  FOR  A  CHILD  1 85 

ception  of  human  nature  and  its  requirements,  it  would  be 
difficult  to  find  terms  in  which  to  describe  them  that  would 
be  adequately  derogatory.  How  can  anyone  suppose  that 
higher  desires,  that  must  manifest  themselves  to  conscious- 
ness and  operate,  if  at  all,  inside  the  mind,  can  ever  owe  their 
origin  or  continued  presence  to  anything  merely  outside  the 
mind,  like  technical  instruction  drilled  into  one  by  a  tutor, 
or  critical  espionage  practiced  by  a  chaperon !  Yet  concep- 
tions like  these  are  being  constantly  adopted,  and  by  people 
undoubtedly  sincere  and  religious.  One  might  suppose  their 
theory  to  be  that  a  man  comes  into  the  world  like  a  mere 
mass  of  matter  to  be  molded  entirely,  as  matter  is,  by  that 
which  is  external.  Of  course,  this  theory  contains  the  sug- 
gestion of  a  partial  truth.  Notwithstanding  hopes  that 
animate  the  mind  from  within,  it  often  needs  assistance  and 
direction  from  without.  The  other  part  of  the  truth,  how- 
ever, is  equally  important.  This  is  that  every  human  being 
is  an  offspring  of  intelligent  life,  and  that  an  offspring,  like 
a  river  through  which  flow  the  waters  that  were  once  in  its 
source,  always  manifests  the  quality  and  tendency  of  that 
from  which  it  springs.  So  far  as  this  source  is  divine,  in  man 
himself  we  must  find  a  revelation  of  divinity.  And  if  we  do, 
and  in  the  degree  in  which  we  do,  must  we  not,  and  should 
we  not,  find  in  him  that  which  can  fulfill  the  highest  possi- 
bilities of  hope? 

The  third  method  of  parental  influence  mentioned  on 
page  183  was  faith.  The  natural  result  of  having  love  for  a 
child,  or  other  human  being,  on  account  of  what  he  is,  is 
hope  for  him  on  account  of  what  he  may  become.  Faith  is 
an  exalted  accompaniment  of  this  hope.  Indeed,  more 
closely  than  either  love  or  hope,  faith  is  connected  with  a 
recognition  of  the  influence  upon  mind  of  higher  desires.  It 
is  because  we  think  of  that  to  which  these  higher  desires,  as 
represented  in  conscience,  have  the  power  to  lead  a  man, 
that  we  trust  in  him.  So  also  should  we  trust  in  the 
child  of  our  love  and  our  expectation.  Not  that  we  sup- 
pose that  conscience  will  always  lead  him  to  the  absolutely 
right, — only  that  it  will  point  him  in  the  right  direction, 
and  set  in  operation  forces  in  his  mind  that  will  all  serve 
the  same  purpose.  Conscience  is  to  every  man  what  a 
compass  is  to  a  mariner.  It  guides  him,  but  it  also  necessi- 
tates on  his  part  calculation, — often,  too,  in  connection  with 
a  chart  that  represents  what  has  been  experienced  by  others. 


186  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

The  faith  in  our  fellow  men,  of  which  we  are  speaking, 
whether  they  be  grown  people  or  children,  is  faith  in  all 
their  processes  of  mind  taken  together  because  these  are  de- 
veloped from  the  underlying  mental  desires  that  may,  and 
in  the  majority  of  cases,  do  control  men.  As  applied  to 
grown  people,  the  conception  of  influencing  them  through 
having  faith  in  them  is  one  of  the  most  important  contribu- 
tions to  practical  philosophy  that  is  attributable  to  modern 
literature.  As  applied  to  children,  the  same  conception  has 
wrought  the  noteworthy  changes  in  educational  methods 
exemplified  in  the  kindergarten,  the  Montessori  system,  and 
various  other  courses  of  instruction  in  the  secondary  as  well 
as  primary  schools  of  our  country.  These  changes  have  led, 
in  some  cases,  to  extravagant  and  exclusive  applications  of 
the  principle  involved.  But  it  contains  one  important  truth ; 
and  the  time  is  coming  when  not  only  in  the  family  and  the 
school,  but  in  all  the  relations  of  society,  business,  church, 
and  state,  even  in  courts  of  justice  and  prisons,  it  will  be 
recognized.  No  greater  influence  can  be  exerted  upon  a 
human  being,  especially  when  trying  to  incline  him  to  the 
right,  than  to  convey  to  him  the  conviction  that  one  has 
faith  in  his  higher  desires.  It  is  for  these  within  himself  that 
he  himself,  without  often  confessing  it,  has  the  highest  re- 
gard and  reverence.  Those  who  recognize  this  fact,  and 
that  every  man's  own  sense  of  obligation  prompts  him  to 
loyalty  to  these  desires,  cannot  fail  to  reveal  to  him  that 
he  is  in  the  presence  of  those  who  have  genuine  fellow- 
feeling  for  him.  The  manifestation  of  this  is  certain  to 
exert  upon  him  what  is,  perhaps,  the  strongest  of  all  possible 
personal  influences, — that  of  a  sympathetic  and  appreciative 
friend.  A  very  young  child,  utterly  unable  to  explain  his 
reasons,  cannot  avoid  feeling  that  faith  so  expressed  proves, 
as  nothing  else  can,  the  love  and  the  hope  that  have  been 
centered  upon  him. 

For  the  reason  that  the  earliest  appeal  of  conscience  to 
the  mind  is  experienced  in  the  form  of  a  feeling  rather  than 
of  a  clearly  understood  conception  (see  Chapter  IX.),  there 
is  always  associated  with  it  more  or  less  mystery.  Even 
those  who  do  not  term  it,  or  acknowledge  that  they  deem 
it  "the  voice  of  God  in  the  soul, "  can  hardly  avoid  treating 
it  as  if  it  were  this.  Justice  Henry  B .  Brown,  of  the  Supreme 
Court  of  the  United  States,  in  a  letter  to  the  author  wrote 
once:  "  I  regard  conscience  as  our  safest  religious  guide,  al- 


HAVING  FAITH  IN  A   CHILD  1 87 

though  it  sometimes  leads  two  persons  to  different  conclu- 
sions; and  that  our  main  efforts  should  be  to  educate  the 
conscience  to  the  distinguishment  between  right  and  wrong, 
and  to  the  adoption  of  the  one  and  the  avoidance  of  the 
other. "  In  this  opinion,  probably,  the  majority  of  thought- 
ful men  would  concur.  But  if,  in  the  minds  of  grown  people, 
the  action  of  conscience  be  associated  with  both  authority 
and  mystery,  much  more  must  this  be  the  case  in  the  mind 
of  a  child  who  is  still  less  able  to  understand  the  sources  of 
his  conceptions.  In  him  especially,  that  which  is  authori- 
tative and  also  mysterious  necessarily  awakens  a  certain 
degree  of  reverence.  In  this  reverence,  which  the  child 
naturally  feels,  or,  with  slight  suggestions,  can  be  made  to 
feel,  we  have  the  beginnings  of  an  important  element  of 
character.  Without  it  as  the  basis  of  mental  action  per- 
haps no  one,  however  scrupulously  he  may  be  trained 
through  precept  and  practice,  can  ever  become  truly  re- 
ligious, or  even — what  is  more  to  the  point  here — funda- 
mentally moral.  Whatever  a  child  reveres,  he  can  be  easily 
inclined  to  obey;  and  when  that  which  he  obeys  is,  for  rea- 
sons that  have  been  given,  the  mental  and  spiritual,  then 
there  is  nothing  that  is  ordinarily  considered  right  which  he 
will  not  be  prepared  to  recognize  for  what  it  is. 
!  So  important  is  reverance  as  an  element  of  character 
that  one  cannot  refrain  from  expressing  regret  because  of 
the  many  families  in  which  no  suggestions  are  ever  made  to 
the  children  with  the  object  of  cultivating  it.  To  make  such 
suggestions  it  is  not  essential  that  parents  should  teach  the 
tenets  of  any  religious  organization,  or  even  belong  to  one. 
All  that  is  necessary  is  that  children  should  be  aided  in 
giving  expression  to  mental  desire  which  it  is  natural  for 
them  to  express.  Nothing  possessing  life,  if  wholly  sup- 
pressed, can  continue  to  live.  But  sometimes,  if  merely  given 
vent,  it  may  not  only  live  but  grow.  So  with  the  higher 
aspirations  of  a  child.  It  may  be  as  unkind  as  it  is  unwise 
to  afford  them  no  outlet. 

The  little  evening  or  morning  prayer  taught  by  the 
mother,  one  or  two  verses  read  before  the  children  at  break- 
fast, or  sometime  during  the  day,  by  the  father,  from  some 
book  recognized  to  have  mental  or  moral  authority,  together 
with  a  sentence  or  two  uttered  by  the  reader,  expressive  of  a 
prayerful  desire  for  protection  and  guidance — are  these  too 
much  to  expect  from  those  who,  by  bringing  children  into 


188  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

the  world,  have  made  themselves  responsible  for  the  moral 
conduct  of  these  children  in  after  life?  It  is  true  that  the 
reaction  in  our  country  against  the  old-fashioned  custom 
of  having  family  prayers  was  not  wholly  unjustified.  The 
complete  chapters  from  the  Scriptures  that  used  to  be  read, 
each  member  of  the  family  spelling  out  a  verse  or  two  as 
the  whole  went  round  and  round  the  circle;  the  comments 
of  the  father  upon  the  meaning  of  the  chapter,  employing 
either  his  own  thoughts  or  those  expressed  in  some  com- 
mentary from  which  he  quoted ;  the  hymns  that  were  sung, 
and  the  comprehensive  prayers  reminding  one  occasionally 
of  those  described  in  Matt,  vi;  I,  as  coming  from  persons 
thinking '  'that  they  shall  be  heard  for  their  much  speaking," — 
all  these  sometimes  made  the  effect  of  the  whole  too  much 
like  that  of  a  religious  service,  and  service  of  any  kind  does 
not  naturally  appeal — as  it  has  been  said  here  that  all  suc- 
cessful mental  influence  should  appeal — to  the  desires  of  a 
child.  Besides  this,  the  service  was  long;  and  it  is  not 
natural  for  a  child  to  give  long  attention  to  anything. 
Moreover,  the  general  effect  was  not  devotional.  The 
method  used  made  the  Scripture  seem  a  reading  lesson,  and 
the  commentary  a  lecture.  Even  the  prayer  did  not  repre- 
sent any  form  employed  by  grown  people  when  most  in 
need  of  spiritual  guidance  and  help.  When  perplexity  and 
temptation  come  to  them,  they  do  not,  as  a  rule,  stop  all 
business,  fall  on  their  knees,  and  utter  a  rhetorical  invoca- 
tion. Very  often  the  most  heartfelt  and  comprehensive 
prayer  is  too  deep  in  the  soul  to  find  expression  in  sound, 
and  too  brief  to  be  uttered  in  a  single  complete  sentence. 
It  must  be  admitted,  of  course,  that  all  instruction  must 
usually  be  imparted  through  form ;  but  one  should  not  over- 
look the  fact  that  the  essential  part  of  that  which  is  obtain- 
able through  the  form  is  never  in  the  form.  The  reverence 
which  has  just  been  said  to  be  fundamental  to  morality  is 
the  substance  of  reverence,  not  the  outward  appearance  of 
it. 

There  are  many  other  traits  very  generally  accepted  as 
being  essential  to  moral  character,  the  cultivation  of  which 
— of  course,  merely  in  the  tendencies  leading  to  them — 
can  be  begun  in  childhood.  Our  dictionaries  have  defined 
most  of  them  satisfactorily;  and  they  need  not  be  discussed 
here  except  so  far  as  to  indicate  their  relationship  to  sub- 
ordinating, in  case  of  need,  the  bodily  to  the  mental.    A 


TRAITS  TO  BE  CULTIVATED  189 

man  may  do  this  latter,  when  considering  his  actions  as 
connected  either  with  others  or  with  himself.  If  connected 
with  others,  he  may  be  influenced  mentally  either  by  their 
personality  through  his  sympathies,  or  by  their  pronounce- 
ments through  his  rationality.  If  connected  with  himself, 
the  consciousness  of  personality  is  so  largely  of  bodily  origin 
and  tendency  (see  page  20)  that  he  is  seldom  influenced 
mentally  except  by  his  own  intelligence  through  his  ration- 
ality. We  may  say,  therefore,  that  he  is  mentally  influenced 
either  by  the  personality  or  pronouncements  of  others,  or 
by  his  own  intelligence.  This  statement  most  people  will 
recognize  to  be  applicable  to  traits  that  even  the  very  young 
have  learned  to  associate  with  the  promptings  of  higher 
desire.  That  which  is  first  recognized  in  these  traits  is 
usually  vague  and  general,  but  nevertheless  fundamental 
in  character  and  capable  of  being  illustrated  so  as  not  to  be 
vague  by  associating  them  with  traits  connected  with  each 
of  the  sources  of  influence  just  mentioned.  For  instance, 
the  vague  feeling  of  reverence  becomes,  when  associated 
with  another's  personality,  respect;  with  another's  pro- 
nouncement, obedience;  and  with  one's  own  intelligence, 
duty.  Other  specific  traits  may  be  similarly  connected  with 
other  conceptions  in  themselves  vague  and  general. 

To  indicate  some  of  these  in  the  order  in  which  they  seem 
most  likely  to  appeal  to  the  intelligence  of  children,  trans- 
parency of  character  may  be  connected  with  frankness, 
truthfulness,  and  trustworthiness;  purity  with  cleanliness, 
decency,  and  chastity;  patience  with  long-suffering,  forbear- 
ance, and  good  nature;  justice  with  fair  play,  impartiality, 
and  magnanimity;  generosity  with  humaneness,  gratitude, 
and  benevolence;  honesty  with  fair  dealing,  candor,  and  pro- 
bity;  manliness  with  dignity,  firmness,  and  courage;  diligence 
with  self-reliance,  thrift,  and  efficiency;  temperance  with 
moderation,  propriety,  and  abstemiousness;  modesty  with 
courtesy,  consider  at  eness,  and  humility ;  loyalty  with  fidelity, 
patriotism,  and  honor;  chivalry  with  appreciation,  responsi- 
bility, and  helpfulness ;  and  self-abnegation  with  self-denial, 
self-sacrifice,  and  altruism.  Of  course,  to  say  that  the  mani- 
festation of  these  traits  involves  the  subordination  of  the 
bodily  to  the  mental  is  virtually  the  same  as  to  say  that 
the  manifestation  of  the  opposite  traits  involves  the  sub- 
ordination of  the  mental  to  the  bodily.  It  would  be  difficult 
to  find  a  better  reason  than  this  for  stating  that  the  follow- 


190  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

ing,  arranged  somewhat  illogically  so  as  to  make  them 
correspond  to  their  opposites  in  the  list  just  given,  are 
morally  wrong:  irreverence,  disrespect,  disobedience, 
neglect  of  duty,  secret iveness,  deceit,  lying,  guile,  impurity, 
foulness,  obscenity,  sensuality,  anger,  rashness,  revenge, 
cruelty,  injustice,  foul  play,  rapacity,  meanness,  extortion, 
cheating,  fraud,  theft,  sneaking,  shirking,  poltroonery, 
cowardice,  laziness,  irresponsibility,  extravagance,  depend- 
ency, dissipation,  drunkenness,  gluttony,  doping,  self-con- 
ceit, jealousy,  envy,  snobbishness,  trickery,  espionage, 
treachery,  hypocrisy,  detraction,  slander,  slur,  abuse,  self- 
ishness, self-indulgence,  self-seeking,  and  in  general  all 
active  malevolence. 

Any  person  who  will  bear  in  mind  that  the  difference 
between  manifesting  such  traits  as  are  indicated  in  the 
former  of  these  lists  and  avoiding  such  as  are  indicated  in 
the  latter  lies  in  the  dominance  given  in  the  one  to  mental 
or  thoughtful  desire  and  in  the  other  to  bodily  or  physical 
desire  will  be  careful  to  apply,  at  least,  one  important  in- 
ference to  the  training  of  the  child.  This  is  that  he  needs, 
above  all  things,  to  have  his  own  mental  or  thoughtful  desires 
and  designs  strengthened  and  broadened  so  that  these  of 
themselves  shall  control  his  actions  whether  directed  toward 
his  own  possibilities  or  toward  those  of  others.  When  one 
clearly  perceives  that  this  is  the  end  in  view,  he  cannot  fail 
to  recognize  that  it  can  never  be  obtained  through  influence 
that  is  merely  bodily,  like  the  whippings  that  were  supposed 
to  be  particularly  effective  in  the  days  when  almost  every- 
body used  to  quote  the  saying,  "  Spare  the  rod  and  spoil  the 
child."  Whipping  may  sometimes  be  necessary,  but  if  so, 
it  is  chiefly  so  as  an  agency  to  call  attention  to  a  subject. 
It  is  effective  for  good  in  only  the  degree  in  which  it  in- 
fluences the  thinking  or  mental  nature.  It  is  true  that,  as 
applied  to  the  young  or  the  mature,  threats  of  what  will  be 
done  in  this  world  or  the  next,  systems  of  espionage,  prying 
into  hidden  resorts,  scourgings,  imprisonments,  or  execu- 
tions may  awaken  in  the  criminally  inclined  a  certain 
amount  of  superstitious  reverence,  apparent  respect,  out- 
ward obedience,  and  assumed  or  pretended  traits  resembling 
those  mentioned  on  page  189;  but  no  influences  so  exerted, 
can  have  any  but  the  most  indirect  effect  upon  the  moral 
character  of  the  minds  subjected  to  them. 

What  is  needed  in  the  child  is  a  desire  to  manifest  thoughtful 


FRANKNESS  AND  TRUTHFULNESS  191 

traits  so  strong  as  of  themselves  to  overbalance  his  opposite 
tendencies.  It  has  been  shown  that  reverence  can  be  culti- 
vated through  developing  the  suggestions  derived  from  the 
experiences  of  conscience.  Respect  and  even  immediate  and 
implicit  obedience  can  be  cultivated  by  kindness,  awakening 
the  confidence  of  the  child,  together  with  explanations  re- 
vealing the  superior  knowledge  of  the  parent,  and  the  dan- 
gers that  may  follow  the  slightest  act  done  contrary  to  or- 
ders or  without  having  received  accurate  information  with 
reference  to  conditions,  as  in  trying  to  touch  a  red-hot  poker, 
or  to  take  a  step  on  a  broken  bridge. 

Not  all  of  the  other  traits  mentioned  on  page  189  need  to 
be  particularly  called  to  the  attention  of  children.  But  some 
of  them  do.  Frankness,  truthfulntess,  and  trustworthiness, 
for  instance,  lie  at  the  basis  of  all  successful  developments 
of  a  child's  moral  nature.  This  is  because  parents  or  guard- 
ians are  not  in  a  situation  to  give  intelligent  instruction  to 
one  whose  deeds,  thoughts,  or  feelings  are  kept  concealed 
from  them.  There  is  nothing  more  important  in  family 
relationships  than  unshaken  belief  on  the  part  of  its  younger 
members  in  the  sympathy,  consideration,  and  justice  of  its 
older  ones.  In  the  degree  in  which  this  confidence  is  lacking, 
and  always  when  there  is  fear  of  scolding  or  punishment, 
the  child's  first  impulse  is  to  be  insincere,  secretive,  and 
deceitful.  If  he  act  upon  this  impulse  only  a  few  times,  he  is 
in  danger  of  forming  a  habit  in  the  same  direction,  the  evil 
conseq uences  of  which  can  scarcely  be  exaggerated.  One  who 
has  formed  this  habit  must  depend  for  information  concern- 
ing scores  of  subjects  which  he  needs  to  understand  upon 
that  which  can  be  learned  from  young  people  as  ignorant  as 
himself,  or  from  older  people  who  have  little  interest  in  his 
welfare,  and  sometimes  a  decided  interest  in  the  opposite. 
The  result  cannot  fail  to  be,  in  many  cases,  disastrous.  The 
only  certainty  of  safety,  or,  at  least,  the  best  certainty  of  it, 
lies  in  the  maintenance  of  confidential  relations  between  the 
young  and  those  who  are  their  natural  protectors. 

Consider,  for  instance,  the  influence  of  such  relations 
upon  the  cultivation,  among  those  who  are  just  passing  out 
of  the  condition  of  childhood,  of  the  traits  that  on  page  189 
immediately  follow  sincerity,  frankness,  and  truthfulness, 
namely,  purity,  cleanliness,  decency,  and  chastity  (see  page 
214).  Boys  and  girls,  when  quite  young,  can  be  made  to 
understand  the  importance  even  of  the  last  two  of  these, 


I£2  ETHICS  AND  NA  TURAL  LA  W 

as  well  as  what  follows  upon  a  disregard  of  them,  such 
as  social  discredit  and  disgrace,  the  loss  of  mental  vigor,  the 
contracting  of  diseases,  and  the  character  and  consequences 
of  these.  Better  than  all  this  they  can  be  made  to  under- 
stand the  difference  between  the  body  and  the  mind,  and 
the  necessity  of  keeping  the  former  in  such  a  condition  as  to 
be  able  always  to  fulfill  the  uses  and  purposes  of  the  latter. 
It  is  probable,  too,  that  from  no  application  of  moral  re- 
quirements can  they  learn  these  so  clearly  as  from  those 
connected  with  indulgence  in  physical  vice.  Nor,  after 
they  have  once  been  made  to  understand  what  are  the 
results  of  this,  will  it  be  difficult  to  inspire  in  them  a  desire 
to  exert  the  self-denial  and  self-control  that  they  will  now 
recognize  to  be  the  primary  conditions  of  success  in  an 
endeavor  to  become  worthy  of  their  mental  possibilities. 
Once  awaken  in  them  this  desire,  and,  as  a  rule,  their  whole 
moral  nature  will  be  given  a  right  trend. 

It  is  for  these  reasons  that  confidence  established  early  in 
life  between  father  and  son,  and  mother  and  daughter,  is  so 
essential.  If  it  do  not  exist,  such  traits  as  those  that  we  are 
now  considering  cannot  always  be  mentioned,  when  it  is 
necessary,  without  concealment  or  embarrassment  that  will 
prevent  their  being  discussed,  as  they  should  be,  freely  and 
fully.  When  there  is  complete  confidence  in  a  parent  and 
in  his  judgment,  such  a  discussion  will  usually  be  followed 
by  a  justifiable  fear,  on  the  part  of  the  young,  of  the  conse- 
quences of  vice,  and  a  wholesome  disgust  for  those  who 
incite  to  it.  In  connection  with  these,  too,  there  will  be 
impressed  upon  the  mind  a  needed  lesson  with  reference  to 
the  necessity  in  all  circumstances  of  upholding  one's  right 
to  maintain  his  self-respect,  and  never  allowing  a  fondling 
fop  or  flirt  to  take  the  least  liberty  with  his  personality. 
Moreover,  when  a  lesson  like  this  is  not  sufficient,  when  a 
temptation  comes  of  a  nature  that  cannot  be  foreseen,  confi- 
dence in  the  judgment  of  a  parent  may  be  a  sure  guarantee 
of  safety.  Thousands  of  young  people  have  been  kept  from 
threatened  danger  not  because  of  any  clear  perception  or 
understanding  of  it,  but  because  of  a  desire  not  to  do  any- 
thing, in  the  absence  of  their  parents,  which  might  not  meet 
with  their  approval  if  present.  A  similar  comment  could  be 
made  to  have  a  broader  application.  Few  people  could  go 
far  astray  if  they  would  always  refrain  from  doing  secretly 
what  they  would  not  like  to  have  known  publicly. 


MORALS  AND  MANNERS  193 

Special  mention  is  not  necessary  here  of  the  other  traits 
in  the  list  on  page  189.  They  can  all  be  taught  in  the  same 
way, — by  making  constant  appeals  to  thought  and  feeling 
of  a  character  fitted  to  develop  mental  tendencies.  Even 
such  apparently  superficial  accomplishments  as  are  termed 
good  manners  can  be  cultivated  in  such  ways  as  to  indicate 
the  connection  between  them  and  higher  desires.  A  child 
can  be  habituated  to  use  phrases  like ' '  if  you  please, "  ' '  thank 
you,"  and  "beg  your  pardon,"  and  to  keep  his  clothes  and 
boots  mended  and  brushed;  and  his  hands,  face,  teeth,  and 
body  clean,  because  those  actions  show  a  proper  regard  and 
respect  for  that  which  is  best  both  in  himself  and  in  others. 
He  can  easily  be  made  to  perceive  that  it  is  not  right  for 
him  to  be  so  lazy  and  selfish  as  to  be  disagreeable  to  those  to 
whom  he  might  give  pleasure.  Thus  many  methods  of  life 
to  which  a  child  can  easily  be  trained,  though  not  always 
moral  in  themselves,  may  tend  to  morality,  and  greatly 
promote  it.  Through  precept  and  example  he  may  gradu- 
ally have  cultivated  in  him  habits  of  mental  self-control  that, 
whenever  necessary,  shall  subordinate  everything  bodily 
about  him  or  in  him  to  rational  and  non-selfish  purposes. 

13 


CHAPTER  XV 


KEEPING    THE    MINDS    DESIRES    UPPERMOST    IN    SCHOOL 
TRAINING 

Education  Means  more  than  an  Effect  Produced  upon  the  Understand- 
ing— The  School  should  Impart,  if  not  Religious  Instruction,  at 
Least  a  Religious  Spirit — Use  of  Placards  Enjoining  Morality — 
Schools  should  Strengthen  Mental  and  Thoughtful  Tendencies — 
Instruction  should  be  Adapted  to  both  Bodily  and  Mental  Re- 
quirements— Differences  in  the  Methods  of  Appealing  to  Each 
Requirement — A  Mistake  to  Suppose  Mental  Desire  Influenced 
only  through  Bodily  Desire — Educational  Methods  Injured  by 
this  Supposition — Study  should  be  Made  not  Easy  but  Interesting 
— Two  Ways  of  Doing  this — Necessity  of  the  Student's  having  Love 
for  his  Work — Drill  Made  Pleasant — Class-room  Competition — 
Literary  and  Athletic  Competitions — Athletics  Sometimes  Over- 
rated— Large  Schools  and  the  Graded  System — Co-education — 
Social,  Scholarly,  and  Ethical  Effects  of  the  System — Young  People 
Need  Instruction  by  those  of  their  Own  Sex. 

WHEN  the  child  begins  to  outgrow  the  preliminary 
training  of  the  family,  he  is  usually  sent  to  school, 
in  order,  as  is  said,  to  be  educated.  Education,  as 
most  of  us  know,  is  a  word  composed  of  two  Latin  ones, 
namely,  e,  meaning  from  or  out  of,  and  ducere,  to  draw.  The 
word  means  more,  therefore,  than  an  effect  exerted  upon  the 
understanding  alone.  It  means  a  drawing  of  the  intellectual 
out  of  its  unintellectual  surroundings:  the  freeing  of  the 
mind  from  any  undue  material  influences, — as  applied  to 
moral  conditions,  the  attaining  of  all  kinds  of  mental  and 
rational  development  notwithstanding  bodily  and  physical 
environment. 

With  this  interpretation  of  the  object  of  education,  we 
can  recognize,  first  of  all,  and  for  the  same  reason  as  when 
considering  the  family  on  page  187,  the  appropriateness  of 
associating,  in  connection  with  the  instruction  given  in 
school,  college,  or  university,  that  which  shall  cultivate  a 

194 


RELIGION  IN  SCHOOLS  195 

sense  of  reverence  and  of  obligation  toward  the  sources  of 
both  mental  and  spiritual  authority.  These  effects  can  be 
produced  without  trespassing  upon  anything  outside  the 
boundary  of  merely  natural  religion.  They  need  not  include 
instruction  in  any  particular  code  of  ecclesiastical  belief. 
In  our  free  schools,  especially,  but  in  our  private  schools, 
also,  there  are  children  of  people  differing  in  their  religion; 
and  leaving  to  these  the  dogmatic  details  of  spiritual  guid- 
ance is  a  simple  matter  of  courtesy  and  duty.  At  the  same 
time  it  would  be  perfectly  feasible  to  collect  for  school  pur- 
poses short  devotional  rituals  and  hymns,  to  which  no  parent 
could  reasonably  object,  the  use  of  which  would  greatly 
stimulate  and  strengthen  the  child's  naturally  religious 
spirit;  and,  no  matter  what  the  form  of  his  family  religion, 
would  tend  to  make  his  own  expressions  of  it  more  spiritual 
than  they  would  be  if  the  school  made  no  recognition  of 
spiritual  obligations. 

As  applied  to  religion,  there  may  be  some  readers  inclined 
to  question  the  feasibility  or  effectiveness  of  the  course  just 
suggested.  But  as  applied  to  the  accepted  principles  of 
morality,  no  one  can  doubt  that  there  ought  to  be  some 
method  of  bringing  these  to  the  frequent  attention  of  school 
children.  In  certain  cases  this  might  be  done  by  teachers, 
but  many  of  the  only  subjects  taught  by  them  cannot  natu- 
rally be  associated  with  morality.  Many  of  the  teachers, 
too,  have  not  sufficient  personal  influence  to  make  their 
moral  opinion  seriously  regarded,  and  the  instructors  even 
in  a  large  school  would  not  probably,  all  of  them  together,  be 
likely  to  mention  all  the  subjects  demanding  attention. 
The  most  authoritative,  frequent,  and  complete  moral 
influence  could,  perhaps,  be  exerted  by  hanging  on  the  walls 
of  the  schoolroom  large  cards  on  which  were  printed,  in  type 
that  could  be  easily  read  and  understood,  certain  univer- 
sally accepted  rules  for  personal  conduct .  To  avoid  anything 
like  a  suggestion  of  propaganda,  even  a  mention  of  the 
sources  from  which  these  were  taken  might  be  omitted. 
Of  course,  among  them  would  always  be  parts,  at  least,  of 
the  Ten  Commandments,  and  the  Golden  Rule.  But  the 
number  of  other  sayings  that  might  be  thus  treated  is  almost 
innumerable,  e.g.: 

14  Enter  not  into  the  path  of  the  wicked,  and  go  not  in  the  way  of  evil 
men.    Avoid  it,  pass  by  it,  turn  from  it,  and  pass  away.  .  .  .  Even  a 


I96  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

child  is  known  by  his  doings,  whether  his  work  be  pure,  and  whether  it 
be  right.  .  .  .  A  good  name  is  rather  to  be  chosen  than  great  riches." 

"Withhold  not  good  from  them  to  whom  it  is  due  when  it  is  in  the 
power  of  thine  hand  to  do  it.  .  .  .  Say  not  to  thy  neighbor,  Go  and 
come  again,  and  to-morrow  I  will  give  thee,  when  thou  hast  it  by  thee. 
.  .  .  Devise  not  evil  against  thy  neighbor.  .  .  .  Strive  not  with  a  man 
without  cause,  if  he  have  done  thee  no  harm." 

"Lord,  who  shall  abide  in  thy  tabernacle?  Who  shall  dwell  in  thy 
holy  hill?  He  that  walketh  uprightly  and  worketh  righteousness,  and 
speaketh  the  truth  in  his  heart,  he  that  backbiteth  not  with  his  tongue, 
nor  doeth  evil  to  his  neighbor,  nor  taketh  up  a  reproach  against  his 
neighbor;  in  whose  eyes  a  vile  person  is  condemned;  he  that  sweareth 
to  his  own  hurt  and  changeth  not. " 

Or  Dr.  Edward  Everett  Hale's 

"Look  up  and  not  down, 
Look  forward  and  not  back, 
Look  out  and  not  in, 
Lend  a  hand." 

Scores  of  times  every  day  some  of  the  children  would  read 
of  subjects  thus  brought  to  their  attention,  and  many  times 
a  teacher  would  use  one  of  them  as  a  text  for  a  school  talk. 
Is  it  possible  to  suppose  that  young  people,  thus  made 
familiar  with  the  first  principles  of  morality,  could  ever 
grow  to  maturity  in  ignorance  of  them,  or  without  some 
definite  impression  with  reference  to  their  importance  ?  One 
cannot  avoid  suggesting  that  some  enterprising  printer 
might  make  considerable  money  for  himself  and  do  much 
good  to  others  by  preparing  and  distributing  ornamental 
cards  of  this  character. 

Even  when  we  turn  from  considering  the  relation  of 
schools  to  religion  or  morality,  and  take  up  that  which  ap- 
pears to  some  to  be  their  only,  and  to  all  of  us,  their  more 
direct  object,  namely,  the  development  of  the  understanding, 
it  is  interesting  to  notice  how  much  of  their  work  suggests 
the  same  conception  of  the  importance  of  procuring  unity 
of  action  between  the  bodily  and  the  mental  nature  that  has 
been  emphasized  so  often  in  this  volume.  This  work  is  ap- 
parently confined  almost  entirely  to  two  objects, — the 
getting  of  knowledge  into  the  memory  so  that  it  shall  be 
retained  there,  and  the  getting  of  the  same  out  of  the 
memory  so  that  it  can  be  used  at  the  right  times  and  places. 
The  first  of  these  objects  usuall}7-  requires  not  a  little  drilling 
of  a  character  largely  1       ih      r  phv  ical.    The  order  of  the 


TWO  AIMS  IN  TEACHING  197 

letters  of  the  alphabet  and  their  sounds  when  combined,  the 
spelling  and  the  meaning  of  words,  the  parts  of  speech, 
the  conjugation  of  verbs  in  one's  own  and  other  languages, 
the  multiplication  and  addition  tables  of  mathematics,  and 
geographical  and  historical  names,— all  are  mainly  learned 
and  facility  in  using  them  acquired  as  the  result  of  repetition, 
which  is  a  physical  process.  The  second  of  the  objects, 
designed  to  accustom  the  pupil  to  recall,  at  the  right 
times  and  places,  what  he  has  learned,  is  mainly  attained 
through  questionings  which  cause  him  to  associate  things 
and  thoughts  as  a  result  of  a  psychical  or  mental  process. 
In  the  school,  therefore,  bodily  and  mental  training  go 
together,  and  most  people  would  admit  that  the  latter, 
for  which  the  former — the  repetition  of  sounds — is  merely 
preparatory,  is  the  more  important  of  the  two. 

There  is  a  misunderstanding  with  reference  to  a  difference 
between  the  nature  of  bodily  and  mental  desires  that  some- 
times leads  to  educational  mistakes.  The  reader  will  recall 
that  on  page  7  it  was  said  that  all  desires  involve  a  com- 
bination of  feeling  and  thought;  but  that,  in  bodily  desire, 
this  thought  is  subordinated  to  the  feeling  which  it  attends 
and  serves,  and  in  mental  desire,  the  feeling  is  subordinated 
to  thought  which  it  attends  and  serves.  As  a  result  of 
this  difference,  it  is  evident  that  influences  exerted  upon 
bodily  desire,  which  is  attributable,  primarily,  to  physical 
feeling,  as  in  hunger,  thirst,  lust,  or  passion,  must  be  more 
or  less  direct  and  immediate;  while  influence  exerted  upon 
mental  desire,  which  is  attributable,  primarily,  to  thought, 
as  in  yearning,  aspiration,  speculation,  or  imagination,  must 
be  more  or  less  indirect  and  mediate.  The  nature  of  bodily 
desire  is  such  that  it  can  be  experienced  in  its  full  force  at 
its  beginning.  The  nature  of  mental  desire,  on  the  contrary, 
is  such  that  it  accumulates  force  as  a  result  of  a  continuance 
of  thinking,  as  in  observation,  comparison,  reflection,  and 
reasoning.  One  may  become  conscious  of  bodily  desire, 
and  drift  into  indulgence  of  it,  without  any  exertion  of  his 
own.  If  he  wish  to  drink  champagne,  he  can  do  so  and 
can  get  drunk  without  the  slightest  consciousness  of  effort. 
But  not  so  with  mental  desire.  When,  notwithstanding  a 
liking  for  champagne,  one  wishes  to  keep  sober,  to  maintain 
his  mental  balance, — in  other  words,  his  mental  control  over 
his  bodily  nature, — he  can  do  it  in  no  other  way  than  as  a 
result  of  an  endeavor,  and  sometimes  of  a  struggle. 


I98  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

It  must  be  borne  in  mind,  however,  that  this  mental 
control,  though  in  it  feeling  is  secondary  and  thinking  pri- 
mary, is  just  as  truly  a  result  of  desire  as  is  bodily  control. 
This  is  not  always  recognized.  No  mistake  is  more  common 
among  parents,  educators,  reformers,  and  even  ecclesiastics 
than  that  of  supposing — often  with  no  realization  of  its 
logical  consequences — that  all  forms  of  desire  have  the 
nature  of  those  that  are  started  and  developed, — as  de- 
scribed on  pages  24  to  26,  from  the  bodily  or  physical  side  of 
one's  being.  Therefore,  when  it  is  argued  that  intellectual, 
moral,  or  religious  deficiencies  should  be  corrected,  so  far 
as  possible,  by  influencing  men  through  their  desires,  this 
statement,  because  supposed  to  refer  to  only  bodily  desires, 
may  occasion  a  method  of  action  likely  to  prove  injurious. 

Take  the  emphasis  given  by  modern  education  upon  the 
importance  of  watching  the  movements  and  choices  of  the 
child  in  order  to  discover  his  own  inborn  tendencies  and 
aptitudes,  and  to  direct  his  training  so  as  to  enable  him  to 
make  the  most  of  them.  There  is  no  gainsaying  the  wisdom 
of  this  course,  or  the  advance  in  educational  methods  attrib- 
utable to  it ;  and  yet  it  may  lead  to  disastrous  results,  if  the 
methods  be  applied  merely  to  physical  or  bodily  tendencies 
and  aptitudes  and  not  to  psychical  or  mental.  It  might  be 
supposed  that  this  latter  would  not  be  done.  What  could 
be  more  senseless  and  wrong,  in  case  one  had  committed  to 
him  the  guidance  of  a  musical  genius,  than  to  allow  his 
physical  or  bodily  indolence  to  keep  him  from  engaging  in 
the  drill  and  hard  work  needed  in  order  to  develop  his  gift  ? 
Yet  something  resembling  this  is  often  done  by  those  who 
have  charge  of  the  young.  A  great  deal  of  the  instruction 
imparted  to-day  in  the  family,  the  kindergarten,  the  school, 
and  even  the  college  and  university,  is  based  upon  the  con- 
ception that  success  in  teaching  may  be  determined  by  the 
degree  in  which  pupils  are  made  to  enjoy  it  because  it  is  con- 
formed to  their  bodily  desires,  by  which  is  meant  to  their 
temperamental  as  distinguished  from  their  mental  inclina- 
tions. That  which  is  taught  is  not  presented  in  ways  to 
awaken  mental  desires,  because  it  is  recognized  that  the 
fulfillment  of  these  cannot  be  attained  along  the  line  of  least 
resistance.  Because  the  mental  necessitates  effort,  the 
teacher  seems  to  fear  that  the  fact  may  be  revealed  to  his 
pupils,  and  this  fear  deprives  them  not  infrequently  of  the 
onlv  form  of  instruction  fitted  to  enable  them  to  develoo 


TEACHING'S  APPEAL  TO  DESIRE  1 99 

their  aptitudes  in  such  ways  as  to  realize  their  highest  possi- 
bilities. The  author  once  undertook  before  some  university 
professors  to  prove  that,  by  a  judicious  use  of  the  elective 
system,  one  could  get  a  Bachelor  of  Arts  degree  from  what 
was  then  considered  the  first  university  of  the  country  as  a 
result  of  doing  less  intellectual  disciplinary  work  than  would 
have  been  required  by  a  female  seminary  of  the  previous 
generation. 

And  yet  the  slightest  thought  ought  to  enable  one  to 
recognize  that  no  play  even,  to  say  nothing  of  employment, 
is  rendered  less  desirable  by  the  mere  fact  of  its  necessitating 
effort — though,  of  course,  such  effort  should  not  be  excessive. 
Where  it  is  excessive,  it  introduces  another  principle.  Some 
of  the  most  popular  games  among  our  small  boys  are  those 
in  which  they  struggle  the  hardest ;  and  what  among  grown 
people  could  involve  more  exertion  than  baseball,  football, 
or  tennis?  The  problem  in  education  is  to  make  study  not 
easy  but  interesting. 

This  is  usually  done  in  two  ways.  The  first  way — a  way 
in  which  the  teacher  is  often  greatly  aided  by  the  family  and 
community,  if  moderately  intelligent — is  by  picturing  for 
the  imagination  of  the  pupil  the  completed  future  results 
which  study  is  designed  to  obtain  for  him.  The  second  way 
— a  way  in  which,  because  of  the  ignorance  of  the  require- 
ments of  culture,  the  teacher  in  our  own  country  is  often 
very  little  aided,  if  not  actually  opposed — is  by  picturing 
for  the  imagination  the  important  but  minute  details  that 
need  to  be  mastered  before  any  great  achievement  can 
become  a  possibility.  Every  teacher  needs  to  bear  in  mind 
that  no  ordinary  man,  and,  least  of  all,  perhaps,  no  genius, 
can  do  all  for  which  his  aptitudes  fit  him,  except  as  a  result 
of  mental  desire  that  prompts  him  to  choose  the  highest  end 
possible  to  his  own  ability  and  to  devote  himself  to  the  best 
possible  means  of  attaining  this  end. 

All  successful  scholars,  or  artists,  whether  mathemati- 
cians, lawyers,  philosophers,  poets,  painters,  or  musicians, 
will  bear  witness  to  the  fact  that,  at  some  time  in  their 
lives,  and  usually  because  guided  and  inspired  by  some 
efficient  teacher,  they  came  to  have  a  distinctly  mental 
desire  that  was  the  supreme  object  of  ambition,  and  to  have 
also  an  absorbing  interest  in  the  practice  and  drill  needed  in 
order  to  attain  it.  This  is  the  kind  of  desire  which  the  in- 
structor ought  to  seek  to  find  and  awaken  in  his  pupils,  and 


200  E  THICS  AND  NAT  URAL  LA  W 

the  kind  of  desire  to  which  he  should  strive  to  conform  his 
methods.  It  is  because,  in  some  way,  something  has  awak- 
ened love  for  work,  especially  work  adapted  for  peculiar 
aptitudes,  that  many  an  awkward  gawk  with  a  repellent 
voice  has  become  a  graceful  and  charming  orator;  many  a 
slow  writer  with  apparently  no  gift  of  expression  has  be- 
come a  voluminous  and  widely  read  author;  many  a  play- 
ground butt,  whose  opinion  was  never  seriously  considered 
by  his  comrades,  has  become  a  powerful  political  leader;  and 
many  an  inferior  reciter  in  the  class  room,  a  great  scholar. 
No  one  can  be  a  preeminently  successful  instructor  unless  he 
believes  thoroughly  in  two  possibilities, — that  of  the  exist- 
ence of  mental  desire  even  in  minds  where  it  seems  most 
dormant ;  and  that  of  the  almost  unlimited  development  that 
can  be  imparted  to  such  minds  through  educational  training. 
Unfortunately,  thousands  of  teachers  really  believe  in 
neither  of  these.  How  much  the  world  suffers  in  con- 
sequence it  would  be  impossible  to  ascertain  or  even  to 
conceive. 

The  pupil's  mental  interest  in  even  the  bodily  or  physical 
drill  mentioned  a  moment  ago  may  be  increased  by  having 
the  object  of  the  drill  explained  to  him.  But  there  are  other 
ways  of  connecting  a  mental  with  a  physical  effect.  When 
the  writer  was  young,  geography  was  taught  by  having  the 
class  sing  the  names  of  places  in  chorus,  while  the  places 
themselves  were  pointed  out  by  the  teacher,  or,  later,  by 
pupils,  on  a  large  map  hung  upon  a  wall.  Sometimes,  es- 
pecially with  small  children,  the  mere  rhythm  of  sound  or 
gesture,  which  is  made  to  accompany  repetition,  introduces 
a  psychical  or  mental  in  the  sense  of  an  orderly  and  calcu- 
lated form  of  interest.  Best  of  all,  for  this  purpose,  however, 
is  an  occasional  interruption  of  the  monotony  of  repetition 
by  questions  applying  what  has  been  learned,  like:  "How 
much  is  seven  times  seven?"  "How  do  you  say  in  Latin: 
'I  have  loved,'  '  I  should  be  loved,' "  etc.  ? 

At  such  times  the  spirit  of  competition  among  those  who 
hold  up  their  hands  to  be  allowed  to  give  answers  causes  the 
whole  performance  to  have  all  the  mental  interest  of  a  game. 
Of  late  years  there  has  been  a  tendency  to  discredit  every 
form  of  competition  in  scholarship,  to  abolish  the  marking 
system,  the  giving  of  prizes,  the  declaiming  of  speeches,  or 
the  reading  of  essays,  in  fact,  of  anything  giving  prominence 
to  individual  attainment.    To  abolish  these  would  undoubt- 


COMPETITION  IN  SCHOOL  LIFE  201 

edly  prevent  a  few  cases  in  which  selfishness  and  self-esteem 
are  developed.  But,  in  many  cases,  it  would  also  prevent  a 
development  of  the  mental  desire  needed  in  order  to  over- 
come the  indolent  tendencies  of  lower  bodily  desire.  As 
a  fact,  very  few  of  those  rendered  eager  to  learn  by  healthful 
competition  are  influenced  by  selfish  purposes  or  to  obtain  a 
mean  advantage.  The  most  of  them  are  trying  to  do  what 
they  consider  worthy  of  their  better  selves, — to  show  that 
they  appreciate  the  advantages  given  them,  and  to  please 
and  honor  their  parents  or  guardians.  The  world  cannot 
afford  to  lessen  fair  and  sportsmanlike  competition  either  in 
the  school  or  in  after  life;  and  this  for  the  reason  that  it  is 
one  of  the  most  successful  of  all  agencies  through  which  to 
effect  the  sources  of  mental  desire.  Of  course,  there  is  a 
chance,  too,  of  its  also  affecting  the  sources  of  physical  or 
bodily  desire;  that  it  will  make  men  self-seeking,  deceitful, 
dishonest,  overreaching,  and  characteristically  mean.  But 
this  is  a  risk  that  confronts  every  man  at  every  stage  of  his 
existence,  from  birth  to  death.  There  is  no  more  reason 
why,  because  of  this  risk,  one  should  seek  to  put  an  end  to 
competition  in  work  than  to  do  the  same  in  play.  If  he  were 
successful  in  doing  it  in  either,  then,  inasmuch  as  the  most 
of  life  that  is  at  all  desirable  is  made  up  of  either  work  or 
play,  he  might  apparently  succeed  merely  in  making  life 
appear  desirable  in  nothing. 

The  principle  just  stated  applies  equally  to  the  encourage- 
ment, among  the  students  themselves,  of  literary,  debating, 
social,  fraternal,  and  religious  societies,  intended  to  develop 
other  traits  representing  other  needed  characteristics  or 
tendencies.  The  late  war,  too,  demonstrated,  more  clearly 
than  had  been  realized  before,  the  practical  benefits  deriv- 
able from  the  training  that  precedes,  the  skill  that  furthers, 
and  the  fair  play  that  accompanies  the  intercollegiate 
athletic  competitions.  All  these,  though  emphasizing  physi- 
cal and  bodily  aptitudes,  necessitate  mental  control  exer- 
cised in  connection  with  them.  Many  a  student,  because 
of  being  on  "the  team,"  has  learned  to  put  self-denial  and 
reason  first,  and  appetite  and  impulse  second.  When  in 
training,  he  often  cannot  smoke,  much  less  eat  or  drink, 
what  he  wants;  and,  when  in  practice,  he  cannot  make,  in 
violation  of  the  rules,  a  single  move  toward  what  seems  al- 
most certain  to  promise  for  himself  individual  prominence. 

All  these  effects  are  distinctly  mental.    Nevertheless,  the 


202  E  THICS  AND  NAT  URAL  LA  W 

predominant  aim  of  the  athlete  is  bodily,  and,  in  an  institu- 
tion of  learning,  it  is  an  anomaly,  in  times  of  peace,  that  he 
should  rank  higher — it  is  not  said  as  high — in  the  opinion 
of  students  and  professors,  as  is  sometimes  the  case,  than 
does  one  who  is  proportionately  successful  in  achieving  an 
aim  that  is  purely  mental.  All  rules  have  exceptions,  and, 
fortunately,  in  our  times,  conditions  requisite  for  war  are 
exceptional.  But  in  ordinary  times  one  could  say  that  the 
college  student  who  really  considers  athletics  more  impor- 
tant than  thought-culture  has  an  outlook  upon  life  that  is  not 
right  side  up.  Unless  converted  from  his  view,  he  is  in 
danger  of  being  obliged  to  support  himself  to  the  end  of  his 
days  on  his  hands,  with  his  head  downward,  and  his  face 
looking  backward.  The  highest  success  is  never  reached  by 
those  who  seriously  aim  at  anything  involving  the  assigning 
of  inferior  rank  to  the  psychical  or  mental. 

Other  educational  influences  in  our  country  seem  some- 
times to  involve  this.  Recall,  for  instance,  the  methods  in 
which  our  free-school  system  has  been  developed  from  the 
little  country  schoolhouse  of  our  forefathers.  Some  of  us  are 
inclined  to  feel  exultant  in  view  of  our  very  large  educational 
buildings,  and  of  the  crowds  of  children  that  attend  them. 
But,  very  often,  these  furnish  merely  one  more  illustration 
of  the  stupid  tendency  of  the  ordinary  mind  to  confound 
that  which  is  physically  big  with  that  which  is  psychically 
great.  Many  of  these  schools  are  inefficient  for  the  very 
reasons  that  make  us  proud  of  them.  If  they  had  not 
been  accommodated  to  the  physical  increase  of  population 
and  the  physical  apparatus  supposed  to  be  needed  for  the 
purposes  of  education,  the  psychical  result  might  have  been 
better.  If  the  small  schoolhouse  had  remained  the  ideal 
even  in  large  cities,  the  parents  of  each  neighborhood  could 
have  continued  to  know  with  whom  their  children  were 
meeting,  and  to  exercise  needed  oversight  over  their  asso- 
ciations; and  the  teachers  could  have  had  some  personal 
acquaintance  with  families,  and  adapted  their  instruction  to 
individual  requirements.  As  it  is,  the  children  are  in  almost 
as  much  danger  of  learning  what  they  should  not  from  one 
another  as  of  learning  what  they  should  from  their  teachers. 
The  enormous  quantity  of  educational  results  that  have 
been  turned  out,  too,  has,  in  many  cases,  diminished  their 
quality.  Until  quite  recently,  and,  in  some  places,  even  yet, 
the  machinery  of  the  graded  system,  by  being  applied  in  the 


COEDUCATION  203 

same  way  to  all,  has  forced  dull  pupils  forward  before  they 
were  prepared  to  advance  intelligently,  making  them  essen- 
tially superficial,  and  held  the  bright  ones  back,  making 
them  listless  and  indolent  because  of  not  having  enough 
work  to  keep  them  busy. 

The  wisdom  of  educating  boys  and  girls  in  the  same 
schools  and  classes,  too,  is  questionable.  It  may  do  well 
enough  in  small  towns  where  parents  can  be  on  the  watch 
and  know  the  character  of  their  children's  associates ;  or  in 
colleges  and  universities  where  all  the  pupils  are  sufficiently 
mature  to  take  care  of  themselves  and  of  one  another.  But, 
even  in  these,  it  is  a  question  whether  the  constant  associa- 
tion between  the  sexes  does  not  tend  to  lessen  the  cultiva- 
tion in  both  of  psychical  and  non-selfish  traits.  Some  insist 
upon  it  that,  in  such  circumstances,  the  boys  become  less 
gallant  and  gentlemanly,  and  the  girls  less  modest  and  lady- 
like ;  that  the  former  do  not  yield,  as  they  would  to  compara- 
tive strangers,  the  best  seats,  or  pick  up  the  handkerchiefs, 
books,  or  chalk  that  have  been  dropped  on  the  floor;  and 
that  the  latter  learn  not  to  expect  these  attentions,  but 
to  push  forward  and  help  themselves.  As  all  approach 
maturity,  too,  at  an  age  when  the  bodily  tendencies  are 
particularly  strong,  and  the  mental  the  opposite,  it  certainly 
does  seem  as  if  all  associations  and  surroundings  should  be 
so  chosen  and  directed  as  to  strengthen  the  latter; — as  if 
the  attention  of  the  pupil  whether  at  work  or  at  play,  should 
be  concentrated,  if  possible,  upon  that  which  is  fitted 
to  influence  and  develop  distinctly  mental  and  rational 
tendencies. 

Certain  indirect  effects  of  that  of  which  we  are  speaking 
also  deserve  notice.  Few  wise  mothers  care  to  have  their 
daughters  know  about  either  the  thoughts  or  actions  of  the 
ordinary  immature  street  boy.  A  policeman  of  the  author's 
district  in  Los  Angeles — in  a  statement  subsequently  justi- 
fied by  an  investigation  by  the  Young  Men's  Christian 
Association  and  by  a  chairman  of  a  regularly  appointed 
physician's  investigation  committee — told  him  that,  while 
he  sent  his  son  through  the  high  school  and  university,  the 
conditions  were  such  that  it  was  impossible  for  him  to  allow 
his  daughters  to  finish  their  courses  even  in  the  high  school, 
and  he  could  not  afford  to  send  them  to  a  private  school. 
What  can  be  thought  of  the  wisdom  or  justice  of  a  method 
of  free  education  that  renders  it  impossible  for  scrupulous 


204  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

parents  to  accept  its  provisions  ?  Even  the  mere  inevitable 
competition  in  scholarship,  if  between  girls  and  boys,  is  not 
desirable.  It  tends  to  make  the  former  study  too  stren- 
uously and  the  latter — strange  as  it  may  appear,  because 
girls  naturally  recite  better  than  boys  of  the  same  age — 
study  too  slightingly.  The  ranking  records  of  too  many  co- 
educational schools  show  two  or  three  boys,  too  bright  to 
be  kept  lower  down,  side  by  side  with  several  girls  in  the 
highest  group,  while  following  these,  with  a  few  boys  scat- 
tered among  them,  are  most  of  the  girls ;  and,  finally,  in  the 
lowest  group  of  all,  with  scarcely  a  girl  among  them,  is  the 
great  body  of  the  boys.  If  you  ask  the  boys  the  reason  of 
this,  you  "find  that  many  of  them  hold  to  the  opinion  that 
only  girls  and  ''sissy  "  boys  care  about  scholarship.  The 
truth  is  that  boys,  even  those  most  influenced  in  other  cir- 
cumstances by  the  spirit  of  competition,  will  seldom  com- 
pete with  girls.  A  few  will  not  because  of  a  spirit  of  gallantry, 
but  more  because  of  a  boyhood  esprit  de  corps.  The  same 
conception  influences  them  to  neglect  literary  work,  as  in 
the  debating  societies,  and  to  join  "gangs"  intent  upon 
doing  what  girls  cannot  do, — a  feeling  that  sometimes  finds 
a  healthful  outlet  in  athletics,  but  sometimes,  also — es- 
pecially in  large  cities — in  groups  given  to  crime,  and  vice .  It 
is  not  too  much  to  say  that  many  of  those  doing  these 
things  would  have  done  exactly  the  opposite,  had  they 
studied  where  they  would  have  been  brought  into  competi- 
tion with  boys  alone,  and  where  brainy  boys  would  have 
been  fully  respected  for  their  intellectual  leadership  and 
thus  rendered  able  to  exert  upon  their  fellows  the  influence 
needed  to  remind  them  of  mental  requirements.  A  cort- 
siderable  experience  as  a  sort  of  Father  Confessor  of  grad- 
uates of  preparatory  schools  has  led  the  author  to  the 
opinion  that  school  sentiment  controlled  by  the  best  ele- 
ment usually  prevents  organizations  for  crime  and  vice  in 
large  schools  attended  by  boys  alone;  but  not  so  often  in 
schools  attended  by  both  sexes. 

Another  injurious  effect  of  the  latter  schools  is  due  to  the 
limited  number  of  teachers  of  one's  own  sex  under  whom  a 
pupil  sometimes  studies.  There  are  many  things  connected 
with  quite  a  variety  of  subjects  which  the  pupil  should 
know,  but  which,  in  such  circumstances,  the  teacher  cannot 
always  and  sometimes  should  not  tell  him.  There  are  other 
things  of  which  any  teacher  ought  to  tell  him,  but  which, 


COEDUCATION  20$ 

nevertheless,  can  have  more  satisfactory  effects  if  told  to 
boys  by  a  man,  or  to  girls  by  a  woman.  As  applied  to  boys, 
for  instance,  this  is  true  not  only  of  actions  like  smoking, 
drinking,  betting  at  cards,  pool,  and  ball  games,  and  prowling 
around  the  streets  at  night.  It  is  true  with  reference  to 
what  might  be  thought  very  minor  matters.  That  which  a 
woman  considers  a  praiseworthy  result  of  caution,  discre- 
tion, and  tact,  a  boy,  especially  if  discussing  the  subject  with 
other  boys,  is  likely  to  attribute  to  a  lack  of  courage,  honor, 
and  truthfulness;  and  there  is  danger,  if  he  try  to  follow  her 
advice,  that  he  may  become,  as  has  many  a  "  mother's 
darling,"  a  sneak,  a  tattletale,  or  a  hypocrite.  Even  the 
purely  intellectual  training  needed  by  a  boy,  with  his  greater 
tendency  to  reject  formulation  and  learn  of  his  own  initia- 
tive through  his  own  experiments,  seems  to  necessitate  a 
different  form  of  teaching  from  that  which  is  successful  with 
girls.  Indeed,  there  are  many  branches  in  which  boys  and 
girls  appear  to  respond  differently  to  the  same  methods 
of  instruction.  Let  us  hope  that  those  who  have  charge 
of  educational  interests  in  various  parts  of  the  country  will 
consider  carefully  the  arguments  in  favor  of  and  against  the 
system  prevailing  in  their  community,  and  will  have  inde- 
pendence of  character  sufficient  to  cause  them  to  dare  to 
deviate  from  the  paths  already  chosen,  or  even  to  retrace 
the  steps  already  taken,  in  case  this  course  clearly  reveals 
itself  to  them  as  the  wisest. 


CHAPTER  XVI 

KEEPING  THE  MIND'S  DESIRES    UPPERMOST  IN  THE  GENERAL 
RELATIONS    OF    SOCIETY 

Self-Control  Needed  by  Members  of  Society;  not  Control  of  Other 
People — Mistakes  with  Reference  to  these  Subjects — The  Mature 
Require  Different  Treatment  from  the  Immature — Too  Straight- 
laced  People  Lacking  in  Moral  Influence — Good  Influence  of 
Some  Parents  because  not  Strait-laced — To  Act  Morally,  Ma- 
ture Minds  sometimes  Need  to  Act  Independently — Reverence, 
Respect,  Obedience,  Humility — Exerting  Public  Influence  on  the 
Side  of  the  Mental — Importance  of  Community  Influence  upon 
Farm  Life — Public  Spirit — Frankness  and  Truthfulness — Cases  in 
which  these  may  Work  Harm — Problems  of  the  Kind  Solved  by 
Balancing  Mind  against  Body — Why  this  Method  Does  no  Harm — 
Promises — Contracts — Purity,  Cleanliness,  Decency,  and  Chastity 
— Reasons  for  these — Chastity  Common,  and  Honored  among 
Men,  though  for  Business  Reasons  Less  Emphasized  than  Integ- 
rity— Chastity  among  Women — Moral  Obligations  Rest  upon  A1J 
— Virtue  its  Own  Reward. 

AFTER  one  has  passed  beyond  the  instruction  and  dis- 
cipline of  the  family  and  the  school,  he  becomes  a 
member  of  what  is  termed  society.  The  chief  differ- 
ence between  his  experience  now  and  that  which  has  pre- 
ceded it  is  that  he  is  no  longer  subject  to  the  oversight  of 
"tutors  and  governors."  He  is  expected  to  take  care  of 
himself,  and  to  become  conscious  that  in  order  to  go  right. 
he  must  exercise  self-control.  These  are  facts  that  are  ex- 
tremely significant.  In  them  is  to  be  found  the  most  im- 
portant of  the  differences  between  youth  and  maturity. 
Yet  many  fail  to  recognize  this.  They  seem  to  suppose  that 
because  another  who  has  had  authority  has  taken  charge 
of  them  when  children,  he  can  continue  throughout  their 
lives  to  do  the  same.  They  think,  therefore,  that  they 
themselves  are  not  responsible  for  the  results  of  their  own 
conduct.  The  blame  for  this,  if  there  be  any,  they  get  into 
the  habit  of  shifting  upon  some  other  member  of  their  family 

206 


TAKING  CARE  OP  OTHER  PEOPLE  207 

or  upon  some  official  of  their  state  or  church.  This  is  the 
case  quite  frequently  with  those  brought  up  where  there  is 
a  great  deal  of  supervision  as  was  formerly  the  case  in  an- 
cient feudalism  or  hierarchy.  Others  seem  to  suppose  that, 
because  grown  people  are  responsible  for  the  conduct  of  the 
child,  they  are  responsible  for  that  of  everybody;  and, 
forthwith,  as  soon  as  they  themselves  are  grown,  they  begin 
to  act  upon  this  theory.  They  get  into  the  habit  of  assuming 
responsibility  for  everything,  some,  apparently — especially 
those  whose  tendencies  are  puritanic — spending  the  main 
energy  of  life  in  dictating  courses  to  be  pursued  by  their 
neighbors. 

Such  people  usually  do  almost  as  much  harm  as  good. 
No  one  can  be  expected  to  attain  to  the  highest  manhood 
unless  he  recognizes  that  he  must  hold  himself  responsible 
for  the  results  of  his  own  actions ;  or  to  attain  to  the  highest 
helpfulness  to  others  unless  he  recognizes  that,  as  a  rule, 
he  must  leave  them  free  to  act  out  their  own  unhampered 
convictions.  Many  grown  people  as  well  as  children  are 
nursed  into  inefficiency  by  accepting  the  domination  of 
strong-willed  associates;  and  many  more  are  provoked  into 
effective  rebellion  against  attempted  domination.  In  the 
latter  case,  they  feel,  without  always  apprehending  exactly 
why,  that  they  have  a  right  to  liberty  of  action ;  and,  if  this 
be  denied  them,  that  they  are  being  treated  unjustly.  For 
this  reason,  dissipation  of  all  sorts  seems  sometimes  only  a 
natural  reaction  against  excessive  prohibitions  of  compara- 
tively innocent  beginnings  of  it.  People  who  greet  such 
beginnings  with  scoldings  and  punishments  may  have  good 
intentions;  but  they  do  not  adopt  wise  methods.  They  are 
trying  to  secure  psychical  or  mental  results  through  merely 
physical  or  bodily  agency ;  and  to  do  this  is  seldom  possible. 
It  is  well  enough  to  keep  a  boy  who  has  not  acquired  suffi- 
cient knowledge  to  recognize  falsehood — or  sufficient  logical 
training  to  weigh  evidence — from  certain  actions,  like  reading 
immoral  books  or  hearing  skeptical  lectures;  or,  while  in- 
tellect and  will  are  too  weak  to  withstand  and  repel  harmful 
suggestions,  from  associating  with  vicious  companions. 
But,  merely  in  order  to  do  one's  duty  to  a  community,  a 
mature  mind  needs  sometimes  to  be  acquainted  with  fal- 
lacious arguments  and  with  the  conditions  of  vicious  life. 
Otherwise,  a  man  may  not  be  able  to  answer  the  former,  or 
to  reform  the  latter. 


208  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

It  is  because  these  facts  are  not  recognized  that  very 
often  people  who  are  what  are  termed  strait-laced — people 
always  apparently  solicitous  to  fulfill  literally  the  smallest 
details  of  action  that  others  have  prescribed — have  little 
moral  influence.  Usually  their  hearts  are  not  at  fault. 
They  are  not  insincere,  as  is  sometimes  represented.  Their 
heads  are  at  fault.  They  are  basing  morality  upon  a  false 
theory,  a  theory  so  false  that  its  erroneous  nature  can  be 
recognized  even  by  one  not  sufficiently  thoughtful  to  be 
able  to  explain  why  he  thinks  it  so.  They  are  attributing 
moral  obligation  not  to  the  psychical  or  mental;  not  to 
anything  of  which  one  becomes  conscious  through  an  effect 
produced  first  of  all  upon  the  mind;  but  to  the  physical  or 
bodily — in  other  words,  to  an  influence  that  would  not  be 
felt  at  all,  were  it  not  for  the  physical  presence  of  others  who 
seem  to  be  exercising  authority  beside  one  or  over  one. 

It  occasionally  happens  that  fathers  and  mothers,  who 
indulge  their  own  bodily  desires,  as  in  smoking  and  drinking, 
are  more  successful  in  training  their  sons  and  daughters  to 
moral  self-control  than  are  those  who  are  more  strict  with 
themselves  and  their  families.  This  is  possibly  because 
such  parents  manifest  more  sympathy  with  their  children, 
and  so  draw  them  nearer  to  themselves,  and,  by  doing  this 
exert  a  greater  influence ;  but  it  is  more  likely  to  be  because 
their  mode  of  life  emphasizes,  as  mere  abstemiousness  could 
not,  the  principle  brought  out  in  Chapter  X.,  that  the  ideal 
of  morality  is  realized  less  through  the  suppression  of 
bodily  desires  than,  whenever  necessary,  through  their  sub- 
ordination. 

Enough  has  been  said  to  indicate  the  different  aspects 
in  which  questions  of  morality  may  appeal  to  the  immature 
and  to  the  mature.  The  latter,  as  has  been  said,  prefer  to 
answer  these  questions  as  a  result  of  their  own  thinking 
and  feeling;  or,  so  far  as  influenced  by  another,  as  a  result 
of  his  appealing  to  their  own  mentality.  For  this  reason, 
though  the  germs  of  all  the  principles  of  right  living  exist, 
and  should  be  cultivated,  in  one  who  is  still  under  the  care 
of  the  family  or  the  school,  it  is  only  later  that  they  need 
to  be  explained  in  their  more  fundamental  and  comprehen- 
sive relationships.  In  accordance  with  this  conception, 
let  us  now  glance  again  at  certain  forms  of  action  already 
considered,  and  also  at  certain  additional  ones  that  it  has 
not  seemed  in  place  to  consider  previous  to  this. 


REVERENCE,  HUMILITY,  AND  PUBLIC  SPIRIT         209 

The  reverence  for  that  which  is  mental  or  spiritual, 
respect  for  one's  elders,  and  obedience  to  those  in  authority, 
which  were  mentioned  in  Chapter  XIV.  as  traits  that  should 
be  developed  in  a  child,  need  to  be  retained  in  part  by  one 
in  mature  life.  They  cause  a  man  to  have  humility  in  view 
of  that  which  he  cannot  know,  deference  for  the  opinions  of 
experts,  and  scrupulousness  in  carrying  out  the  directions 
of  those  who  have  a  right  to  give  orders.  And  in  no  way, 
perhaps,  better  than  through  these  traits  could  one  reveal 
high  intelligence  and  a  character  in  which  the  mental  is 
dominant.  Contrary  traits  invariably  show  superficiality 
of  conception,  a  limited  outlook  and  a  foredoomed  futility 
of  endeavor.  Depth  of  thought  is  always  awed  by  the 
mystery  of  the  unseen  forces  above  and  about  one.  Breadth 
of  view  always  recognizes  the  fruits  that  can  be  gathered 
from  the  wide  experience  of  others;  and  efficiency  avails 
itself  of  the  machinery  of  custom  and  law  which  have  been 
devised  as  a  result  of  centuries  of  thought,  and  are  operating 
to  safeguard  and  prosper,  not  one  man,  but  vast  communi- 
ties of  men.  There  are  times  when  individuals  are  justified 
in  disregarding  institutions  that  have  become  customary, 
legal,  traditional,  and  sacred;  but  this  is  generally  because 
the  methods  through  which  they  happen  at  the  time  to  be 
expressed,  need  to  be  reformed.  It  is  seldom  because  the 
spirit  or  principle  that  is  at  the  basis  of  them  needs  to  be 
abolished.  On  the  contrary,  it  usually  needs  to  be  repre- 
sented, and  therefore  to  be  possessed,  more  fully. 

In  connection  with  this  thought,  one  cannot  avoid  the 
suggestion  of  the  importance  of  exerting  such  influence  as 
one  may  have  on  the  side  of  such  agencies  as,  on  the  whole, 
are  calculated  to  stimulate  and  strengthen  other  people's 
thoughtful  desires.  This  is  the  reason  why  many  a  man  is  a 
staunch  supporter  of  religious  institutions,  notwithstanding 
much,  perhaps,  in  their  forms  and  creeds  that  appear  to  him 
unsatisfactory.  He  recognizes  that  their  predominating 
influence  is  intellectually  and  spiritually  uplifting,  and  by 
his  example  he  aims  to  draw  the  attention  of  his  family  and 
neighbors  to  the  fact.  For  the  same  reason,  he  refrains 
from  business  and  rests  from  labor  on  one  day  of  the  week. 
For  the  same,  too,  he  associates  himself  with  those  who 
carry  on  activities  intended  in  any  way  to  benefit  the  com- 
munity. He  becomes  not  only  a  patron  but  an  active  par- 
ticipant of  work  intended  to  improve  the  condition  of  those 

14 


210  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

who  have  been  unfortunate,  whether  because  ignorant, 
incompetent,  ill,  or  vicious.  There  are  hundreds  of  ways  in 
which  society  can  enable  him  to  join  with  others  in  holding 
out  a  helping  hand  to  those  who  need  it ;  and  he  shows  him- 
self to  be  extremely  unwise,  and  possessed  of  a  very  narrow 
outlook  upon  his  possibilities,  if  he  fail  to  avail  himself  of  his 
opportunities  in  these  regards.  An  important  fact  that  he 
should  learn  early  in  life  is  that  a  man  can  become  interested 
in  almost  anything  upon  which  he  is  willing  to  begin  to  ex- 
pend labor;  and  if  this  labor  be  of  a  character  particularly 
fitted  to  excite  and  develop  in  himself  and  others  mental 
desire,  he  cannot  afford  in  justice  to  his  own  nature,  to  let 
the  occasion  escape  him. 

Very  recently  the  author  has  been  reading  an  account  of 
the  youthful  experiences  of  a  boy  brought  up  on  an  Ameri- 
can farm  of  the  Middle  West;  and  the  dreariness,  the 
drudgery,  the  lonesomeness,  the  lack  of  interest  in  anything 
broader  than  itself,  or  stimulus  to  anything  better,  rendered 
the  whole  account  pitiful  in  the  extreme.  Yet  thousands  of 
people  belonging  to  the  generation  just  passing  away  can 
recall  conditions  upon  farms  in  the  Eastern  States — say  in 
central  New  York — where  life,  though  not  devoid  of  labori- 
ous phases,  was  lightened  by  conditions  of  intercourse  and 
enjoyment  that  not  only  made  them  delightful  to  remember 
but  so  contributed  to  the  development  of  intelligence  and 
refinement  that  the  boys  and  girls  of  the  farms  could  pass 
and  did  pass  with  scarcely  any  intervening  experience  into 
some  of  the  most  prominent  business,  political,  and  social 
positions  of  the  country.  That  which  chiefly  contributed 
to  this  result  was  the  intense  community  life  of  the  neighbor- 
hood. In  those  days,  this  was  usually  connected  with 
church  life,  but  it  was  not  confined  to  this.  There  were 
weekly  singing  schools,  sewing  and  reading  societies,  ly- 
ceums,  discussions,  lectures,  plays,  sleighing  parties,  festi- 
vals— all  sorts  of  methods  designed  to  bring  people  together, 
and  succeeding  in  doing  so.  In  the  Western  farm  life  de- 
scribed in  the  book  of  which  mention  has  been  made,  there 
had  been  no  realization  of  the  importance  of  community 
influence.  Each  incoming  farmer  had  apparently  bought 
as  much  land  as  he  could,  and  placed  his  house  in  the  center 
of  it  where  he  was  removed  as  far  as  possible  from  any 
neighbor.  If,  instead  of  this,  each  newcomer  had  selected 
for  his  dwelling  some  corner  of  his  property  where  his  family 


FRANKNESS  AND  TRUTHFULNESS  211 

could  be  near  other  people,  and  had  extended  to  other 
methods  of  life  the  feeling  prompting  this  action,  the  whole 
nature  of  the  surroundings  might  have  been  made  more 
livable  because  more  mental  in  the  sense  of  rational  and 
humane. 

Think  what  it  means  for  a  member  of  society  to  become 
chiefly  interested  in  devising  methods  of  increasing  the 
prosperity  and  happiness  of  those  surrounding  him,  as  con- 
trasted with  methods  of  increasing  opportunities  merely  for 
himself !  Think  of  the  difference  in  moral  character  between 
the  person  who  devotes  his  life  to  the  former  pursuit,  and 
the  one  who  devotes  it  to  the  latter!  Nothing  is  more  en- 
couraging in  the  history  of  our  country  than  its  various 
social  associations  that  have  been  directly  designed  to  give 
expression  and  development  to  mental  promptings.  These 
associations  do  not,  and  need  not,  always  have  a  distinctly 
moral  aim;  but  reading,  literary,  musical,  or  dramatic  clubs 
are  mental  in  tendency,  and,  for  this  reason,  even  by  the 
most  pleasure-seeking,  ought  to  be  recognized  as  important 
alternatives,  even  if  not  substitutes  for  such  methods  of 
enjoyment  as  involve  merely  bodily  indulgence. 

Frankness,  truthfulness,  and  sincerity  also;  that  were 
mentioned  in  Chapter  XIV.,  are  traits  whose  importance  is 
not  diminished  after  the  period  of  childhood.  A  man  who  is 
trying  to  give  dominance  to  the  mental  will  not  hide  his 
feelings  and  intuitions,  or  facts  concerning  which  he  has 
information,  behind  the  mask  of  his  bodily  nature  unless 
he  has  the  best  of  reasons  for  it.  If  he  do  it  because  he  fears 
that  others  may  not  agree  with  his  opinions  or  accept  his 
information,  and  so  may  not  continue  to  be  influenced  by 
him,  he  is  in  danger,  owing  to  his  efforts  to  preserve  their 
respect,  of  surrendering  his  own  self-respect.  If  he  do  it 
because  he  has  reason  to  fear  opposition,  ostracism,  or 
persecution,  he  is  in  danger  of  proving  himself  a  moral 
coward.  If  he  do  it,  not  because  of  any  fear,  but  in  order 
to  gain  the  undeserved  confidence  of  others,  and,  through 
flattery  or  fraud,  obtain  their  admiration  or  help,  then  he 
has  so  completely  subordinated  the  mental  to  the  physical 
that  he  deserves  all  the  opprobrium  that  is  meant  to  be 
conveyed  when  one  calls  another  a  hypocrite  or  a  sycophant. 

But  the  question  arises;  Must  one  always  be  frank?  Must 
he  always  tell  the  truth?  Must  he  tell  it  to  those  whom  it 
might  injure?    Would  it  be  right  for  one  to  be  instrumental 


212  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

in  any  way  in  injuring  others?  Must  one  tell  the  truth  to 
those  who  have  no  right  to  know  it ;  or  to  those  who,  if  told 
it,  might  use  it  for  the  purpose  of  harming  themselves  or 
others?  Would  it  be  right  for  one  to  be  instrumental  in 
bringing  about  this  result?  Suppose  that  an  invalid  be  so 
ill  that  bad  news  coming  to  him  suddenly  might  imperil  his 
life,  and  the  news  arrive  that  his  best  friend  has  just  been 
killed;  suppose  that  a  wife  with  half  a  dozen  dependent 
children  be  asked  by  a  hated  husband,  when  drunk  and  in  a 
violent  temper,  whether  she  loves  him;  suppose  that  a 
brother  who  is  a  spy  condemned  to  be  shot  be  hiding  in  his 
home,  and  his  mother  or  sister  be  asked  whether  or  not  he  is 
inside  it ;  suppose  the  father  of  a  family,  trying  to  obtain  a 
living  for  them,  be  questioned  with  reference  to  his  methods 
of  investing,  buying,  or  selling  by  one  who  is  known  to  be 
crafty  and  unscrupulous,  intent  only  on  taking  an  unfair 
advantage  of  whatever  knowledge  he  may  gain, — in  cir- 
cumstances like  these,  is  the  one  questioned  under  obliga- 
tion to  be  frank  and  truthful? 

Some  people  find  it  difficult  to  answer  such  questions. 
Could  not  a  part  of  the  difficulty  be  removed  by  applying 
to  them  the  principle  that  has  been  unfolded  in  this  volume, 
— by  taking  the  ground  that  a  man  in  no  circumstances 
should  disregard  the  promptings  of  his  mental  or  psychical 
nature?  If  he  were  to  ask  himself  which  course  of  the  two 
would  be  the  more  thoughtful,  rational,  kindly,  and  unself- 
ish, is  there  much  doubt  what  would  be  his  answer?  But 
even  in  this  case,  he  might  hesitate.  His  very  hesitation, 
however,  would  necessitate  mental  action,  and,  therefore, 
whatever  were  his  decision,  would  tend  to  direct  it  aright. 
As  Young  says  in  the  "Night-Thoughts," 

Who  does  the  best  his  circumstance  allows 
Does  well,  acts  nobly;  angels  could  no  more. 

At  any  rate,  it  is  not  likely  that  a  question  thus  treated 
would  cultivate  in  a  man,  as  is  sometimes  supposed,  a 
tendency  to  believe  in  using  a  wrong  means  in  order  to 
attain  a  right  end.  There  has  been  no  suggestion  here  in- 
volving the  use  of  a  wrong  means.  Thoughtful ness,  ration- 
ality, kindliness,  and  unselfishness  are  not  wrong  but  right. 
Men  who  are  scrupulously  careful  to  carry  out  the  prompt- 
ings of  these  will  be  among  the  last  to  keep  from  a  knowledge 


KEEPING  PROMISES  21$ 

of  the  truth  those  who  ought  to  know  it,  whether  in  the 
home,  the  school,  the  shop,  the  office,  the  courthouse,  the 
hospital,  or  the  church.  The  suppression  of  the  truth  that 
from  time  immemorial  has  enabled  the  officials  of  nations 
and  institutions  to  keep  large  masses  of  people  over  whom 
they  have  had  control  uneducated,  ignorant,  stupid,  and 
superstitious  does  not  need  for  its  prevention  a  conception 
of  the  truth  which  insists  upon  its  being  expressed  in  all 
circumstances  regardless  of  evil  consequences.  The  result 
that  is  most  important  can  be  best  attained  by  estimating 
the  requirements  of  truthfulness,  as  of  every  other  trait 
contributing  to  moral  rectitude,  by  the  degree  in  which  it 
succeeds  in  helping  to  outweigh  the  bodily,  in  the  sense  of 
the  physical,  the  egoistic,  and  the  selfish,  by  the  mental,  in 
the  sense  of  the  rational,  the  humane,  and  the  non-selfish. 

In  connection  with  any  discussion  of  trustworthiness,  a 
suggestion  necessarily  arises  with  reference  to  the  keeping 
of  a  promise.  This  is  the  expression  of  an  intention  that  has 
awakened  expectation  and  action  on  the  part  of  another. 
In  case  the  promise  be  not  fulfilled,  the  one  to  whom  it  has 
been  given  may  suffer  not  only  disappointment  but,  if  the 
matter  be  important,  serious  disaster.  To  prevent  such 
results,  many  a  high-minded  man  has  kept  his  word  at  the 
expense  of  sacrificing  not  only  all  his  property  but  his  life; 
and,  among  honorable  people,  an  habitual  promise-breaker 
is  usually  considered  as  almost  typically  inconsiderate, 
selfish,  and  untrustworthy.  There  are  some  cases,  however,  in 
which  it  is  usually  conceded  that  promises  can  be  considered 
as  not  binding.  These  are  cases  in  which  the  fulfilment  of 
them  is  impossible;  unlawful;  immoral;  based  upon  condi- 
tions subsequently  proved  not  to  exist;  or  not  voluntarily 
given  for  the  purpose  of  awakening  expectation  or  action 
in  those  personally  interested  in  the  matter  to  which  the 
promises  refer. 

A  promise,  when  put  into  the  form  of  a  written  agreement 
between  two  parties,  each  of  whom  engages  to  do  certain 
things  upon  certain  conditions,  is  termed  a  contract.  The 
general  principles  underlying  its  fulfillment  are  the  same  as 
those  underlying  an  ordinary  promise;  but  as  the  contract 
is  a  legal  document,  the  interpretation  of  its  requirements 
and  fulfillments,  in  cases  of  dispute  between  the  contracting 
parties,  is  subject  to  determination  by  some  court  of  justice. 

The  traits  following  transparency ,  frankness,  truthfulness, 


214  E THICS  A ND  NA  TURAL  LA  W 

and  trustworthiness,  as  mentioned  on  page  189  are  purity, 
cleanliness,  decency,  and  chastity;  and  none  can  reveal 
quite  as  clearly  as  these  do  the  results  of  subordinating  the 
bodily  to  the  mental.  Purity  is  a  word  used  to  designate 
the  quality  of  one's  feeling  and  thinking  when  his  higher 
spiritual  desire  is  least  vitiated  by  an  admixture  with  lower 
physical  desire.  Cleanliness  indicates  a  subjective  con- 
dition of  mind  or  body  that  is  characterized  by  purity. 
Decency  is  determined  by  the  objective  expression  in  word 
or  deed  of  a  condition  of  cleanliness;  and  chastity  depends 
upon  the  application  of  all  the  three  other  traits  to  relations 
between  the  sexes.  In  the  degree  in  which  higher  desire — 
the  desire  for  that  which  is  in  accordance  with  a  rational 
regard  for  the  best  interests  of  the  individual  and  of  the 
community — is  uppermost  in  one's  nature,  chastity  pro- 
motes continence  and  prevents  intercourse  not  legalized 
by  marriage.  If  a  man  were  an  animal  only,  and 
not  a  human  being,  he  would  not  feel  obligated  to  manifest 
these  traits.  They  are  all  developments  of  a  desire  to  do 
nothing  unworthy  of  one  possessing  a  mind  by  which  he 
ought  to  be  controlled.  It  is  largely  the  consciousness 
of  possessing  this  mind,  and  of  not  having  used  it  as  he 
should,  that  accounts  for  the  sense  of  shame  that  almost 
invariably  comes  to  those  who  have  not  been  able  to  conceal 
from  the  general  public  the  fact  of  their  own  unchastity. 
It  is  quite  common  for  Japanese  men  to  veil  their  faces 
when  they  visit  haunts  of  vice;  and  we  all  know  of  the  social 
stigma  that  is  sometimes  unjustly  as  well  as  uncharitably 
attached  to  a  woman  who  is  merely  suspected  of  a  fall  from 
virtue.  Perhaps,  the  same  conception  of  that  which  be- 
comes one  who  possesses  a  mind  which  should  be  enthroned 
over  all  action  accounts  for  the  ceremonies  that  apparently 
in  all  countries  and  among  all  races,  however  uncivilized, 
accompany  marriage.  It  seems  as  if  we  must  ascribe  these 
ceremonies  very  largely  to  a  desire  to  emphasize  the  psychi- 
cal as  contrasted  with  the  physical  side  of  marriage;  as  if 
they  were  needed  to  satisfy  a  certain  demand  in  the  minds 
of  the  participants  to  have  the  world  recognize  their  acknow- 
ledgment of  their  allegiance  to  higher  desire.  If  this 
surmisal  be  justified,  then  as  long  as  human  nature  as  at 
present  constituted  lasts,  what  is  termed  "free  love"  will 
probably  be  discredited,  and  those  who  practice  it  be  more 
or  less  disesteemed. 


CHASTITY  215 

Those  acquainted  with  life  in  prisons  and  the  sentiments 
prevailing  in  them  agree  in  saying  that,  as  a  rule,  a  criminal 
believes  that  the  only  difference  between  himself  and  men 
outside  the  prison  lies  in  the  fact  that  these  have  had  no  such 
opportunity  as  he  has  had  to  commit  the  crime  for  which  he 
has  been  punished;  or  else  that  they  have  committed  it,  and 
have  never  been  found  out.  This  principle  applies  to  chas- 
tity. The  unchaste  think  all  others  are  the  same.  But  the 
customs  and  laws  of  all  races  and  nations  prove  this  concep- 
tion to  be  untrue.  It  is  untrue  even  as  applied  to  men  as 
distinguished  from  women.  It  is  men  almost  invariably 
who  have  set  the  examples  for  these  customs  and  drafted 
the  laws  concerning  them.  It  is  true  that  men  do  not  avoid 
other  men  known  to  have  violated  the  principles  of  chastity 
as  they  do  those  known  to  have  violated  the  principles  of 
financial  honesty.  But  this  is  owing  to  the  requirements  of 
business.  One  cannot  well  refuse  to  trade  with  others 
because  they  are  unchaste;  but  he  can  and  should  refuse  to 
trust  them  and  should  warn  his  neighbor  against  doing  so, 
in  case  they  are  dishonest.  There  are  other  ways,  however, 
equally  emphatic  in  which  men  express  their  estimate  of 
one  who  is  unchaste.  Think  of  the  many  adulterers  who 
have  been  shot  by  fathers,  brothers,  or  husbands !  Any- 
one, too,  acquainted  with  the  blackballing  of  nominees  for 
membership  in  any  first-class  college  fraternity  or  city 
club  will  bear  testimony  that  the  feeling  of  disapprobation 
underlying  this  shooting  is  by  no  means  confined  to  those 
who  have  a  personal  grievance.  Some  years  ago,  the  mana- 
gers of  one  of  the  most  distinctly  aristocratic  men's  clubs 
of  the  country  informed  a  member  that  he  would  be  ex- 
pelled if  he  did  not  instantly  withdraw  a  card  of  invitation 
to  accept  the  hospitality  of  the  club  that  he  had  sent  to  a 
certain  foreign  duke,  against  whom  there  had  been  no 
charge  except  the  one  that  we  are  now  considering.  The 
duke,  moreover,  had  already  been  accepted  and  feted  by 
the  ladies  of  the  city,  and,  some  months  later,  took  back  to 
his  own  home  one  of  the  wealthiest  of  them  as  his  bride. 

It  is  true,  however,  that  chastity  is  usually  considered 
more  indispensable  to  good  character  in  a  woman  than  in  a 
man.  There  are  reasons  for  this  opinion.  If  a  wife  be  un- 
chaste, her  husband  can  never  be  sure  that  he  is  the  real 
father  of  her  children.  She  offends  not  only  against  the  law 
of  right,  but  against  his  fatherhood  rights  in  particular. 


216  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

No  consequence  quite  commensurate  with  this  follows  upon 
a  similar  offense  on  the  part  of  a  man.  But  even  though  this 
be  the  case,  and  even  though  a  man  believe — as  most  men 
do — that  he  is  more  susceptible  to  temptation  in  this  direc- 
tion than  is  a  woman,  these  facts  furnish  no  excuse  for  his 
own  indulgence.  The  more  difficult  a  duty  may  be,  the 
more  strength  of  character  does  it  indicate  and  develop  in 
the  one  who  fulfills  it.  Another  thing  is  also  true.  The  more 
weak  his  character,  the  less  can  he  afford  to  violate  the 
law  in  accordance  with  which  the  bodily  should  be  kept 
from  outweighing  the  mental. 

This  subject  can  never  be  rightly  discussed  without  recog- 
nizing that,  as  applied  to  it,  and  with  a  meaning  different 
from  that  which  is  sometimes  assigned,  it  is  true  that  "virtue 
is  its  own  reward."  The  joy  and  satisfaction  that  accom- 
pany most  of  the  triumphs  and  achievements  of  life  are 
lessened  by  a  disturbing  sense  of  the  presence  within  one  of 
more  or  less  of  the  selfishness  of  pride  and  exultation.  But 
there  is  nothing  of  these  in  the  grateful  feeling  that  one 
experiences  who  can  look  back  upon  no  victim  that  has 
fallen  and  been  deserted  in  his  pathway,  except  that  lower 
nature  within  himself  which  deserved  defeat  and  over 
which  he  had  a  right  to  be  a  victor.  The  consciousness  of 
having,  by  his  own  efforts,  obtained  peace  for  his  own  spirit, 
and  of  being  at  peace  with  his  fellows  is  inestimably  precious, 
whether  one  consider  its  effects  upon  his  mind  when  at  rest 
or  in  action.  In  order  to  experience  all  the  enjoyment 
possible  to  life  and  all  the  inspiration  that  it  can  impart,  one 
must  have  and  continue  to  have  an  attitude  of  mind  in 
which  he  can  avail  himself  to  the  full  of  its  mental  as  well 
as  its  bodily  effects.  Only  the  mental,  developed,  as  we  have 
found,  by  influences  that  come  from  without  and  above,  is 
able  to  surround  and  surmount  physical  conditions  with  the 
ideal  and  imaginative  charms  that  are  essential  to  fit  them  to 
become  things  of  beauty.  Only  moisture  and  sunshine  which 
are  not  of  its  own  evolvement  can  make  the  bush  that  grew 
into  a  mere  thorny  product  of  the  soil  burst  into  flower  and 
fragrance.  Few  of  those,  therefore,  who  have  formed  habits 
of  indulging  in  vice  do  not  live  in  a  world  deprived  of  some  of 
its  charm  and  beauty.  They  are  always  more  or  less  in  the 
condition  of  the  drunkard  who  cannot  see  wine  sparkling 
in  a  glass  without  feeling  an  approaching  daze  of  insanity, 
or  drink  it  without  a  dread  of  stumbling  into  insensibility- 


CHASTITY  2iy 

It  sometimes  seems  as  if  all  nature  were  a  mighty  instrument 
of  tyranny  from  which  the  only  possibility  of  escape  is 
afforded  by  constant  mental  activity;  that,  in  no  other  way 
except  by  exerting  this,  can  one  escape  from  servitude  to 
laws  that  bring  a  man  under  the  influence  of  pain  and  decay 
if  they  do  not  deprive  him  wholly  of  that  consciousness  of 
spiritual  freedom  which  alone  can  insure  perfect  happiness. 
If  one  wish  to  have  his  life  resemble  a  heaven  rather  than  a 
hell,  the  first  thing  for  him  to  do  is  to  learn  to  treasure  his 
physical  body  so  far  only  as  it  may  be  considered  a  palace 
or  a  temple  in  which  to  enthrone,  and,  as  it  were,  enshrine, 
his  higher  nature, — in  other  words,  as  an  honored  or  sacred 
dwelling  place,  every  part  of  which  should  be  kept  clean  and 
pure  because  only  thus  can  it  always  be  prepared  for  high 
and  holy  uses. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

KEEPING  THE  MIND'S  DESIRES  UPPERMOST  IN  SOCIAL  CUSTOMS 
AND   HABITS 

Matters  of  Habit  and  Manner  not  mentally  Unimportant — Mental 
Influence  Exerted  over  Bodily  Appetite — Selection  of  Food — 
Cooking  and  Seasoning  Food — The  Use  of  those  Stimulants  that 
are  Injurious  only  to  Self — Tobacco — Stimulants  Injurious  also  to 
Other  People,  like  Intoxicating  Drinks  and  Opiates — Restricting 
their  Use  through  Circulation  of  Information  concerning  their 
Effects — Regulating  their  Use  by  Law — Prohibiting  it  altogether — 
Objections  Made  to  Prohibition — Those  with  the  Same  Moral  Aims 
do  not  always  Agree  with  Reference  to  the  Means  of  Attaining 
them — Law  Applied  by  Using  Bodily  Force  can  never  Exert  any 
but  Indirect  Influence  upon  Mental  Results — However  wisely 
Framed,  Law  can  never  be  Substituted  for  Mental  Self-control. 

ON  page  193  in  referring  to  the  virtues  that  can  be  culti- 
vated in  children,  a  connection  was  suggested 
between  a  thoughtful  desire  to  be  kind  to  others,  and 
a  desire  to  make  one's  self  agreeable  to  them,  as  shown  in 
keeping  one's  clothes  and  boots  mended  and  brushed,  and 
one's  hands,  face,  teeth,  and  body  clean.  Many  people  who 
recognize  the  importance  of  these  matters  in  children  seem 
to  forget  that  they  are  of  equal  importance  in  themselves. 
They  seem  to  look  upon  grown  people  as  they  do  upon 
grown  plants, — as  things  not  needing  any  longer  to  have 
water  wasted  on  them.  Just  at  the  time  when  the  Christian 
church  with  all  the  civilization  surrounding  it  was  preparing 
to  plunge  into  the  depths  of  the  Dark  Ages,  one  of  its  councils 
passed  a  canon  prohibiting  women  from  washing  themselves 
for  fear  that  they  would  make  themselves  too  attractive 
physically.  It  was  one  way  of  trying  to  fulfill  the  ascetic 
conceptions  mentioned  on  pages  124-128.  But,  as  argued  in 
subsequent  pages,  these  conceptions  were  wrong.  It  is  this 
fact  that  excuses  the  present  chapter.  It  has  to  do  with 
matters  that  many  people  suppose  to  be  not  in  the  least 

218 


SELECTING  FOOD  219 

degree  related  to  morality.  But  they  are  related  to  this,  if, 
for  nothing  else,  for  the  very  good  reason  that  the  body  is 
the  servant  of  the  mind,  and  that  anything  that  can  make  a 
servant  more  healthy  and  strong  increases  the  efficiency  of 
his  service. 

This  fact  suggests  that  the  first  way  of  obtaining  bodily 
health  and  strength  is  through  obtaining  the  right  quantity 
and  quality  of  food ;  and  that  the  most  natural  way  in  which 
to  do  this  is  to  follow  the  guidance  of  appetite.  Notice, 
however,  that,  in  order  to  be  moral,  a  man  must  follow  this 
guidance  rationally;  i.e.  in  a  way  dominated  by  mental  con- 
siderations. Only  in  the  degree  in  which  he  does  this,  will 
his  appetite  lead  neither  to  overindulgence,  as  in  gluttony; 
nor  to  underindulgence,  as  in  famishment. 

To  consider  a  few  directions  in  which  the  influence  of 
mind  is  needed  in  order  to  overbalance  that  of  mere  appetite, 
take  the  question  with  reference  to  the  different  kinds  of 
food  that  one  can  select.  Not  many  of  these  are  fitted  for 
the  use  of  everybody.  Most  of  them  are  digestible  for  some 
but  indigestible  for  others.  Millions  suffer  from  dyspepsia 
and  die  early  because  they  themselves  or  others  who  pro- 
vide food  for  them  have  never  learned  that  such  common 
staples  as  fresh  bread,  boiled  potatoes,  roast  pork,  uncooked 
fruit,  and  sweetened  deserts  are,  for  many  people,  little  less 
innocuous  than  slow  poison.  No  one,  if  he  can  avoid  it, 
should  be  instrumental  in  foisting  upon  the  community  a 
bodily  or  mental  invalid.  One  of  the  first  duties,  therefore, 
of  every  parent  or  guardian  is  to  discover  for  his  protege, 
and  of  every  grown  person  to  discover  for  himself,  what  he 
can  or  cannot  digest ;  and  then  to  regulate  all  bodily  indul- 
gence to  accord  with  this  mental  knowledge.  m  As  self-control 
exercised  because  of  mental  requirements  lies  at  the  basis 
of  all  morality,  it  is  needless  to  argue  that  this  elementary 
control  of  appetite  may  become  an  important  factor  in  cul- 
tivating a  moral  habit  of  mind.  Nor  is  there  any  doubt  that 
the  cultivation  of  it  may  be  begun  in  extreme  youth. 

Until  the  children  of  the  author  were  over  ten  years  of 
age,  they  never  could  be  induced  to  eat  candy  except  after 
obtaining  permission  from  their  mother.  This  was  no  result 
of  physical  punishment  but  merely  of  explanation  designed 
to  train  them  through  mental  understanding.  It  is  because 
of  unchecked  self-indulgence  in  such  things  that  boys  and  girls 
sometimes  begin  careers  that  end  in  gluttony  and  dissipation. 


220  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

But  food  needs  not  only  to  be  properly  selected.  It  needs 
also  to  be  properly  cooked  and  seasoned.  A  fellow  professor 
once  asked  the  author  if  he  had  ever  taken  a  meal  at  the 
house  of  one  of  our  colleagues.  "No,"  was  answered. 
"Don't  then, "  said  the  other,  "or  you'll  die  soon,  as  he  will. 
His  wife  doesn't  know  how  to  cook,"  and  the  professor  to 
whom  he  referred  did  die  within  a  year  and  of  a  stomach 
trouble.  When  what  is  to  be  eaten  is  well  cooked  and  sea- 
soned, the  one  partaking  of  it  can  hardly  avoid  keeping  it 
in  his  mouth  long  enough  to  masticate  and  salivate  it;  and 
to  do  these  is  essential  to  successful  digestion.  The  Catholic 
Church  is  justified  in  calling  gluttony  a  deadly  Fin;  but  its 
being  this  is  no  excuse  for  making  meals  unappetizing.  It 
seems  to  be  a  well  proved  fact  that  mental  vitality,  and  to 
some  extent  sanity,  depends  upon  bodily  vitality.  Up  to  a 
certain  point,  therefore, — the  point  where  the  physical  is 
allowed  to  dominate — the  "better  a  man  lives,"  as  people 
say,  physically,  the  better  will  he  live  psychically. 

In  connection  with  appetite,  one  must  consider  the  use  of 
stimulants.  Of  these,  there  are  two  classes, — those  in  which 
one's  excessive  indulgence  proves  injurious  to  himself  alone, 
as  in  the  cases  of  tea,  coffee,  and  tobacco;  and  those  in  which 
it  proves  injurious  both  to  himself  and  to  others,  sometimes 
threatening  and  destroying  property  and  life,  as  in  the  cases 
of  beer,  wine,  distilled  liquors,  and  various  opiates.  It  is 
evident  that  the  same  methods  cannot  be  applied  to  remedy 
the  evils  of  both  classes.  When  a  man  injures  himself,  he 
himself  must  usually  apply  the  remedy.  What  he  most 
needs,  then,  is  to  recognize  and  practice  in  his  own  person 
the  principle  of  subordinating  the  bodily  to  the  mental. 
So  far  as  his  experience  or  the  investigations  of  others  lead 
him  to  suppose  that  tea,  coffee,  or  tobacco  makes  his  mind 
work  more  clearly  and  his  body  more  vigorously,  or,  at  least, 
not  less  so,  he  is  justified  in  using  them ;  otherwise  not. 

Of  course,  freedom  in  doing  this,  as  in  doing  other  things, 
should  be  more  or  less  restricted  in  the  case  of  minors.  To 
them  tea  and  coffee,  but  especially  tobacco,  may  prove  very 
injurious.  The  Hon.  Charles  B.  Hubbell,  when  President 
of  the  Board  of  Education  of  New  York  City,  founded  among 
the  boys  an  Anti-Cigarette  League.  This  was  because  of 
his  discovery  that  hundreds  of  them,  previously  exception- 
ally bright  and  forward  in  their  studies,  became  dull  and 
backward  after  beginning  to  smoke, — especially  if  they  used 


TOBACCO  221 

cigarettes  which  more  than  pipes  or  cigars  incline  the  user 
to  draw  the  smoke  into  the  lungs.  In  confirmation  of  the 
same  fact  the  Hon.  Willis  L.  Moore,  when  head  of  the 
United  States  Weather  Bureau,  told  the  author  that,  of 
the  hundreds  of  boys  employed  mainly  as  messengers  in  its 
various  offices  throughout  the  country,  those  that  had  to  be 
dismissed  because  of  inattention,  forgetfulness,  and  general 
inefficiency  seemed  to  be  invariably  "cigarette  fiends." 
Whatever  may  be  the  result  of  smoking  after  one  has  grown 
to  maturity,  its  effects  in  rendering  stale  and  tough  the 
fresh  sensibilities  of  the  brains  of  the  half -grown  are  about  as 
indisputable  as  the  effects  of  the  same  process  when  turning 
fresh  pork  into  ham.  Parents  and  guardians  would  do  well  to 
use  every  means  in  order  to  induce  those  under  their  charge 
to  refrain  from  the  habit  until  older.  Pledging  boys  to  do 
this  is  quite  common  with  men  even  though  they  them- 
selves smoke.  Women  who  smoke  often  encourage  the 
young  of  both  sexes  to  smoke  with  them.  This  fact  prob- 
ably explains  why  to  some  a  lady's  cigarette  always  sug- 
gests moral  irresponsibility  and  leakage.  Some  time  ago 
the  author  was  quoting  to  a  leading  physician  in  a  large  city, 
as  an  illustration  of  extravagance  in  statement,  the  remark 
of  another,  that  a  "woman  who  smokes  will  do  anything," 
meaning  anything  bad.  "I  believe  it  myself,"  he  said.  It 
is  not  necessary  to  join  in  this  belief  in  order  to  recognize 
that,  by  smoking,  a  woman  does  not  always  add  to  the 
charm  of  her  companionship.  The  same  is  true  occasionally 
of  a  man.  It  is  strange  how,  at  times,  this  habit  tends  to 
deaden  one's  sense  of  obligation  to  make  himself  agreeable, 
— to  say  nothing  about  being  useful.  Yet  everybody  prob- 
ably knows  not  only  women  but  men  who  can  scarcely 
endure  without  nausea  the  presence  of  one  smoking ;  or,  even 
after  he  has  ceased,  the  odor  that  often  clings  to  his  breath, 
clothing,  and  other  surroundings. 

Now  let  us  consider  the  class  of  stimulants  that  prove 
injurious  to  others  as  well  as  to  oneself.  These  sometimes 
necessitate  more  than  self-control  exercised  by  the  in- 
dividual tempted  to  indulge  in  them.  Any  course  of  action 
that  may  endanger  the  life  and  property  of  people  in  gene- 
ral justifies  the  exercise  of  control  by  one's  associates  in  the 
community.  This  control  may  be  expressed  in  either  an 
informal  or  a  formal  way.  In  an  informal  way,  men  may 
seek  to  influence  public  sentiment  and  private  practice  by 


^22  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

refraining — and  sometimes  signing  pledges  to  refrain — from 
using  these  stimulants,  either  when  by  themselves  in  their 
own  homes,  or  when  acting  as  hosts  or  guests  to  others.  No 
one  can  fail  to  recognize  the  high  purpose  of  those  who  pur- 
sue this  course.  The  example  of  such  people,  however,  will 
not  be  very  effective  unless  they  are  careful  to  abstain 
from  a  censorious  and  apparently  self-righteous  attitude  of 
mind  toward  a  neighbor  who  fails  to  think  or  to  act  exactly 
as  they  themselves  do.  The  neighbor  may  have  been  accus- 
tomed to  use  such  stimulants,  especially  beer  and  wine, 
from  childhood.  He  may  argue  that  all  the  wrong  connected 
with  their  use  is  in  getting  intoxicated,  to  which  he  himself 
is  as  much  opposed  as  are  the  total  abstainers.  Not  a  few, 
too,  honestly  believe  that  these  agencies  are  essential  to 
preserve  their  health,  absolutely  necessary  if  they  are  to 
avoid  chronic  dyspepsia.  It  is  evident  that  what  people  with 
such  opinions,  especially  the  latter,  need  is  more  than  precept 
or  even  example.  They  need  proof,  and  to  know  the  facts 
on  which  it  is  based. 

Fortunately  of  late  years  this  has  been  recognized,  and, 
as  a  result  of  investigation,  there  has  come  to  be  a  growing 
conviction  on  the  part  of  medical  men  that  the  corrective 
for  indigestion  is  to  be  found  more  in  a  change  of  food  and 
its  preparation  than  in  chemical  changes  wrought  in  it  after 
reaching  the  stomach;  and  that  alcohol,  even  though  at 
times  medicinally  beneficial,  cannot  be  used  habitually 
without  causing  more  or  less  of  that  "auto-intoxication" 
which  precedes  disease  in  some  one  or  more  of  the  bodily 
organs.  As  the  best  guarantee  of  morality  in  connection 
with  any  form  of  physical  indulgence  is  the  exercise  over  it 
of  mental  control,  so,  as  a  safeguard  against  the  evils  of  this 
indulgence,  there  can  be  no  doubt  of  the  wisdom  of  the  wide 
circulation  among  all  classes  of  these  carefully  derived 
scientific  conclusons. 

Mental  explanations  and  arguments,  however,  are  not 
always  of  themselves  sufficient  to  accomplish  results  such 
as,  in  this  case,  seem  necessary.  An  appetite  for  intoxicants 
is  often  purely  bodily  and  physical,  and,  at  least  when  it 
leads  to  intoxication  and  violence,  it  needs  to  be  counter- 
acted by  physical  force.  Where  property  and  life  are  threat- 
ened, no  one  can  deny  the  right  and  duty  of  the  community 
to  put  an  end  to  the  danger  through  the  enactment  and 
enforcement  of  law.    In  many  kinds  of  business,  as  on  rail- 


LIMITING  THE  SALE  OF  INTOXICANTS  223 

ways  and  in  machine  shops,  where  employees  need,  at  all 
times,  to  have  complete  control  of  their  mental  facilities, 
these  laws  are  frequently  made  by  corporations.  No  men 
are  employed  by  them  who  are  known  to  indulge  in  a  stimu- 
lant while  at  work,  and,  in  many  cases,  to  make  sure  that 
they  will  not  do  it  then,  they  are  forbidden  to  indulge  in 
one  when  not  at  work.  In  almost  all  civilized  states,  too, 
we  find  laws  intended  to  regulate  overindulgence  in  this 
form  of  appetite.  In  some  cases  these  are  directed  mainly 
against  what  is  sold.  Saloon  traffic  in  liquors  stronger  than 
light  wines  or  beers  is  forbidden,  the  adulteration  of  either 
such  liquors  or  of  stronger  ones  is  made  punishable;  or  the 
sale  of  any  intoxicants  to  minors  or  drunkards  is  prevented 
— occasionally,  as  in  Europe,  by  issuing  licenses  allowing 
those  who  have  proved  that  they  will  not  abuse  the  privilege 
to  purchase  whatever  they  choose.  In  other  cases  the  laws 
are  directed  against  the  places  in  which  the  traffic  is  carried 
on.  Sometimes  the  number  of  these  is  limited,  or  sometimes 
intoxicants  are  permitted  to  be  sold  only  in  a  hotel  or  res- 
taurant where  food  must  be  purchased  at  the  same  time 
with  them.  Sometimes  dealers  in  them  are  obliged  to  obtain 
government  licenses  for  which  a  high  price  is  charged,  with 
the  double  purpose  of  raising  a  large  government  revenue 
and  of  causing  those  who  obtain  them  to  assist  in  the 
detection  and  punishment  of  such  as  attempt  to  sell  without 
them.  In  these  and  other  ways,  efforts  have  been  made  in 
almost  every  age  and  country  to  regulate  the  use  of  intoxi- 
cants so  that  the  community  shall  not  suffer  from  them. 

But  there  are  large  numbers  who  are  not  satisfied  with 
provisions  made  merely  to  regulate  this  evil.  They  say 
that  all  manufacture  or  sale  of  any  intoxicants  should  be 
prohibited:  and  there  is  no  doubt  that,  if  laws  could  be 
framed  and  enforced  in  accordance  with  their  demands,  the 
remedy  would  be  sufficient;  that  alcoholic  drunkenness  in 
the  country  would  be  entirely  abolished. 

This  statement  cannot  well  be  denied;  and  because  such  is 
the  case,  a  constitutional  amendment  providing  for  its 
abolishment  has  recently  been  passed  in  the  United  States 
Congress.  There  are  man y,  however,  whom  this  action  has 
not  converted  to  a  belief  in  prohibition.  They  think  that 
no  such  remedy,  however  carefully  framed,  can  be  success- 
fully applied.  They  freely  admit  that  it  may  accomplish 
the  desired  results  in  small  communities  in  which  people 


224  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

in  general  approve  of  it,  but  they  argue  that  it  must  be 
ineffective  in  large  and  mixed  communities  where  there 
are  many  who  have  all  their  lives  been  accustomed  to  use 
alcohol,  or  who  sympathize  with  those  who  wish  to  use  it, 
or  who  favor  indulgence,  if  moderate,  and  therefore  consider 
such  laws  an  unjust  infringement  upon  personal  liberty.  It  is 
argued  that  in  a  community  containing  many  of  this  charac- 
ter there  must  be  numbers  of  policemen,  lawyers,  judges, 
and  jurymen  who  cannot  be  expected  to  be  very  alert  in  fer- 
reting out  and  punishing  violations  of  a  law  disapproved  by 
many  of  their  friends  who,  either  by  their  votes  or  recom- 
mendations, have  aided  them  in  the  past  and  might  aid  them 
in  the  future.  In  a  republic,  it  is  said,  a  law  is  executed  in 
the  degree  in  which  it  represents  public  sentiment ;  and,  when 
it  does  not,  there  is  danger  of  cultivating  among  certain 
classes  a  disregard  and  discredit  of  all  legal  enactments;  of 
encouraging  an  illicit  production  of  imitated  liquors,  fraudu- 
lently concocted  from  noxious  chemicals,  with  the  result  of 
lessening  the  number  of  moderate  drinkers,  but  at  the  risk 
of  increasing  the  harm  done  to  those  who  become  such. 
(See  footnote  27,  page  285.) 

It  will  be  noticed  that  the  difference  between  the  advo- 
cates of  prohibition  and  of  regulation,  as  applied  to  this 
evil,  does  not  necessarily  involve  a  difference  in  moral  con- 
ception. Both  may  equally  desire  to  keep  the  mental 
uppermost.  Where  they  differ  is  in  the  method  through 
which,  as  each  argues,  this  result  can  be  best  attained.  To- 
gether the  two  furnish  a  striking  illustration  of  the  way  in 
which  conscience,  aroused  to  action  by  the  consciousness  of 
conflict  between  the  mental  and  the  bodily,  starts  and  con- 
tinues to  impel  the  energies  of  the  mind  in  the  right  general 
direction;  but  leaves  the  methods — the  various  steps  to  be 
taken  while  moving  in  this  direction — to  be  determined, 
as  must  everything  that  is  done  by  a  free  rational  being,  by 
the  particular  decisions  of  individual  reasoning. 

It  must  not  be  supposed,  however,  that  this  impelling 
energy  of  mental  desire  ever  ceases  to  operate,  even  when  the 
mental  nature  seems  to  be  concerned  only  with  the  rational 
selection  of  methods.  Here,  as  in  every  similar  case,  but 
more  clearly  than  in  most  of  them,  one  needs  constantly  to 
bear  in  mind  that  the  moral  effect  of  whatever  measures 
are  adopted  depends  entirely  upon  their  influence  upon 
mental  desire.    If  either  prohibition  or  regulation  attain  a 


PROHIBITION  VS.  REGULATION  22$ 

moral  result,  it  must  do  so  because  of  this  form  of  influence. 
Prohibition,  by  making  traffic  in  alcoholic  beverages  secret 
if  not  impossible,  can,  at  least,  keep  it  out  of  the  sight  of  the 
young  and  others,  and,  therefore,  from  being  an  object  of 
temptation  to  them;  and,  by  making  the  traffic  illegitimate, 
it  can  influence  the  thoughts  and  opinions  of  men  so  that 
they  shall  be  opposed  to  this  form  of  indulgence.  Regula- 
tion, too,  by  making  it  illegal  to  sell  to  drunkards  and  minors, 
may  produce  a  similar  mental  effect.  But  it  must  always  be 
borne  in  mind  that  all  methods  of  influencing  morality  by 
civil  law  are  drafted  primarily  to  affect  bodily  or  physical 
conditions.  If  there  be  opposition  to  the  laws  they  must  be 
carried  out  through  the  exertion  of  physical  force ;  and  this, 
of  itself  alone,  operating  as  it  does  only  because  of  exciting 
fear  of  detection  and  punishment,  can  produce  only  a  physi- 
cal effect.  Too  many  parents  imagine  their  son  to  be  safe 
from  immorality  because  they  have  merely  voted  to  abolish 
some  external  phase  of  temptation.  But  there  are  other 
forms  of  vice  in  which  he  may  indulge  still  more  for  the 
very  reason  that  this  is  denied  him.  Nor  is  there  any  certain 
guaranty  that  he  will  not  indulge  in  this  vice  as  soon  as  he 
gets  where  he  can  evade  that  which  prevents  it.  Indeed, 
there  are  those  who  argue  that  conditions  in  which  the  young 
are  constantly  tempted  to  use  alcohol,  yet  are  constantly 
prompted  to  resist  the  temptation  because  of  their  own  de- 
ductions from  the  effects  exhibited  in  the  drunkards  by 
whom  they  are  surrounded,  are  actually  favorable  rather 
than  the  reverse  to  the  cultivation  as  applied  to  this  evil  of 
moral  self-control. 

It  is  never  justifiable,  however,  for  men  to  permit  wrong, 
if  this  can  be  avoided,  on  the  ground  that  good  may  come  of 
it.  This  much,  however,  the  statements  that  have  been 
made  ought  to  impress  upon  our  minds,  namely,  the  futility 
of  expecting  mere  external  law,  administered  through  physi- 
cal force,  to  accomplish  moral  results.  These  can  be  wrought 
by  nothing  except  individual  mental  self-control.  Laws 
against  the  use  of  alcohol,  opium,  cocaine,  or  like  drugs  are 
justifiable  as  a  means  of  preventing  the  destruction  of 
property  and  life.  But  let  us  not  suppose  that,  except  in- 
directly, they  can  have  any  great  influence  in  preventing 
the  destruction  of  individual  character. 

15 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

KEEPING   THE  MIND'S   DESIRES    UPPERMOST   IN    SOCIAL   SUR- 
ROUNDINGS AND  PLEASURES 

Clothing — An  Agency  for  Mental  Expression — Application  of  this 
Principle  to  Forms  of  Work  and  Art — Under-dressing  in  Society — 
Over-dressing — Bodily  or  Mental  Desires  as  Shown  in  Ostentatious 
Residences — Money  Wisely  Spent  to  Gratify  Public-spirited  Men- 
tal Desire — Bodily  vs.  Mental  Desire,  as  Shown  in  Feasting — In 
Dancing — In  Card-playing ;  why  Gambling  and  Betting  are  Wrong 
— Evil  Effects  Connected  with  them  and  Other  Pastimes — Forms 
of  Enjoyment  in  which  One  is  Entertained  by  Others — Morality  and 
Art — The  Kind  of  Art  that  One  should  Patronize — Frivolous  and 
Superficial  Art — Every  Part  of  the  Human  Form  can  Become  a  Ve- 
hicle for  Mental  Expression — Different  Effects  of  the  Actual  Human 
Form  and  of  its  Representations  in  Art — This  Difference  Over- 
looked— Disregard  of  Proprieties  in  Moving  Pictures  and  Theatri- 
cals— Disregard  and  Distortion  of  Truth  for  Artistic  Effects  in 
Dramas  and  Novels. 

AFTER  food  and  drink,  the  next  thing  that  usually 
demands  a  man's  attention  is  clothing.  The  pri- 
mary object  of  this  is  to  cover  parts  of  the  body  which, 
if  exposed,  would  become  uncomfortably,  perhaps  danger- 
ously, cold.  In  covering  these  parts,  it  is  usually  customary 
to  leave  uncovered,  even  at  the  expense  of  suffering  from 
cold,  the  face  and  hands.  This  is  because  these  are  the  chief 
agencies  through  which  a  man  sees,  hears,  and  obtains  his 
thoughts,  and  also  communicates  them  to  others  in  speech 
and  gesture,  or  carries  them  out  in  his  deeds.  In  other 
words,  these  are  the  chief  agencies  of  his  mental  nature. 
If  they  were  kept  entirely  hidden  by  clothing,  he  could  not 
use  them  for  mental  expression. 

These  facts  with  reference  to  keeping  covered  or  un- 
covered certain  parts  of  the  body,  and  the  reasons  for  the 
facts,  seem  to  be  instinctively  recognized  by  most  people. 
When  they  meet  a  man,  they  judge  of  his  thoughts,  feelings, 

226 


CLOTHING  227 

and  character  by  first  looking  at  his  face,  and  then  at  his 
hands,  and  what  he  does  with  them.  Clothing  that  reveals 
them,  therefore,  and  conceals  everything  else,  may  be  said 
to  emphasize  the  mental  or  psychical  nature.  Clothing 
that  does  the  opposite,  causing  an  unnecessary  exposure  of 
parts  usually  kept  hidden,  emphasizes  the  bodily  or  physical 
nature. 

Of  course,  this  effect  will  not  be  produced  in  case  the 
person  is  engaged  in  some  form  of  work  or  recreation  in 
which  there  is  reason  for  the  exposure.  No  one  objects  to 
limited  clothing  when  one  is  stoking  an  engine  or  taking  a 
bath  in  the  ocean.  To  say  no  more,  a  reason  itself  is  mental, 
and  sufficiently  so  usually  to  render  any  effect  into  which  it 
enters  something  more  than  physical.  Because  art,  too,  is 
usually  associated  with  that  which  is  mental  in  source  and 
effect,  a  similar  principle  sometimes  applies  to  it.  (See 
page  236.) 

There  is  an  undue  emphasis  in  the  direction  opposite  to 
that  of  the  mental  that  is  sometimes  forced  upon  one's 
attention  through  immodesty  in  personal  clothing.  It 
might  be  termed  undress,  but,  with  the  strange  perversity 
sometimes  manifested  in  the  words  that  people  use,  it  is 
more  likely  than  not  to  be  exhibited  in  what  they  term  full 
dress.  Because  it  shows  itself  in  an  entirely  unnecessary 
and  therefore  intentional  exposure,  or  suggestion,  of  parts 
of  the  body  that,  as  a  rule,  are  kept  concealed,  such  empha- 
sizing furnishes  a  very  clear  illustration  of  subordinating 
the  mental  to  the  physical.  Many  women  especially  seem 
to  be  unaware  that  their  method  of  dressing  fails  to  manifest 
proper  regard  for  the  mentality  of  themselves,  of  their  hus- 
bands, or  of  others  who  are  obliged,  perhaps,  to  associate 
with  them.  And  many  men  fail  to  feel  flattered  by  a  sug- 
gestion made  in  public  that  their  characters  are  such  that 
they  may  be  expected  to  be  fascinated — to  be  led,  perhaps, 
to  "fall  in  love" — through  an  appeal  made  mainly  to  their 
physical  nature.  They  are  conscious  in  their  conscience 
that  this  ought  not  to  be.  Some  of  them,  therefore,  often 
remember  to  the  end  of  their  lives  the  bored  disgust  with 
which,  at  some  time,  they  have  been  obliged  to  pose  as  the 
delighted  victim  of  such  a  mode  of  attack.  Perhaps  they 
can  remember,  too,  how  they  envied,  all  the  while,  that  other 
man,  sitting  near  by,  tete-a-tete  with  some  modestly  dressed, 
but,  for  this  very  reason,  mentally  fascinating  woman,  every 


228  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

look  in  whose  thoughtful  face  indicated  that  she  was  recog- 
nizing in  her  companion,  and  endeavoring  to  meet  as  a 
comrade,  one  who  seemed  to  have  a  mind  and  soul.  It  is 
worth  noticing  with  what  unanimity  artists  in  their  can- 
vases and  spiritists  in  their  conjurations,  when  they  repre- 
sent messengers  from  the  psychic  or  spirit  state,  depict 
these,  with  exception  of  hands  and  face,  as  robed, — usually 
in  white,  the  least  emphatic  of  colors.  This  fact  is  a  proof 
of  what  to  most  people  is  the  mental  or  psychical  ideal  in 
clothing.  Even  the  church  choir  boys  in  their  white  sur- 
plices appear  to  some  of  the  worshipers  to  be  veritable 
cherubs,  though  if  it  were  not  for  their  vestments,  they 
might  seem  to  the  same  worshipers  very  ordinary  and  un- 
attractive. The  transformation  wrought  in  them  by  dress, 
with  the  suggestions  accompanying  it,  might  be  attained 
through  the  same  agency  by  many  of  their  elders.  It  is  too 
bad  that  ignorance  of  human  nature  and  its  mental  demands 
prevents  so  many  of  the  latter  from  availing  themselves  of 
their  opportunities. 

The  principle  under  consideration  may  apply  not  only  to 
underdressing  but  to  overdressing.  This  causes  dominance 
to  be  assigned  not  to  the  physical  human  body  but  to  physi- 
cal surroundings.  Either  condition  subordinates  the  mental, 
showing  distrust  of  its  efficiency  either  in  oneself  or  in 
others.  No  one  can  have  much  faith  in  her  own  or  in  her 
associates'  possession  of  intelligence  who  thinks  that  she 
must  recommend  it  to  them  by  hiding  her  mind  behind  a 
mass,  and  sometimes  a  mess,  of  silk,  satin,  velvet,  or 
jewelry.  It  would  be  difficult  in  any  way  to  exhibit  more 
infidelity  to  that  which  is  highest  in  a  man's  nature.  And 
when  to  excess  in  dressing  is  added  paint  on  the  face  and 
perfume  everywhere,  it  does  not  need  the  underlying  sug- 
gestion that  there  are  defects  to  be  covered  by  the  one,  or 
disinfected  by  the  other,  to  reveal  the  agent's  wholly  false 
conception  of  all  that  is  noblest  and  best  in  human  influence. 
In  mercy  to  their  kind,  people  who  indulge  in  such  practices 
ought  to  assume  a  virtue  if  they  have  it  not,  and  treat  men 
as  if  crediting  them  with  some  of  the  elementary  traits  of 
manhood,  even  if  in  doubt  of  their  having  any  of  those  of 
morality. 

A  man's  residence  is  merely  an  extension  of  the  sur- 
roundings to  which  he  begins  to  give  attention  when  he 
starts  out  to  dress.    For  this  reason  his  home  may  indicate 


OSTENTATIOUS  RESIDENCES  229 

the  dominance  in  him  either  of  bodily  or  physical  or  else  of 
mental  or  rational  desire.  The  former  desire  leads  to  a  con- 
struction intended  to  call  attention  to  one's  physical  re- 
sources, and,  through  this,  to  extend  his  physical  influence 
and  prominence  in  the  community,  causing  his  house  to  be, 
if  possible,  more  costly,  luxurious,  magnificent,  and  showy 
than  are  any  of  those  of  his  neighbors.  Mental  or  rational 
desire  leads  to  exactly  the  opposite, — to  a  construction 
erected  in  accordance  with  strictly  reasonable,  artistic,  and 
public-spirited  conceptions:  to  a  house  that  is  convenient 
rather  than  costly,  comfortable  rather  than  luxurious,  and 
instead  of  being  magnificent  and  showy,  no  more  ornate 
than  is  fitted  to  blend  well  with  the  general  effects  that 
make  one's  neighbors'  houses  attractive  and  beautiful.  Of 
course,  in  judging  the  style  and  surroundings  in  which  a 
man  lives,  one  should  always  bear  in  mind  the  different 
conceptions  that  people  have  derived  from  the  different 
ways  in  which  they  have  been  brought  up.  What  seems 
only  a  commodious  cottage  to  some  may  seem  a  palace  to 
others.  It  ought  to  be  said,  too,  that  a  part  of  the  reason 
why  it  seems  what  it  does  to  these  latter  may  be  owing  to 
wholly  unworthy  feelings  of  envy  and  jealousy.  But  for 
such  feelings,  they  might  derive  great  personal  gratification 
from  the  house  not  only  because  enabling  them  to  claim  it 
as  a  civic  asset  adding  to  the  charm  and  importance  of  their 
own  neighborhood,  but  because  enabling  them  also  to  enjoy 
and  develop  their  aesthetic  natures  when  looking  at  the 
lawns  and  gardens  surrounding  the  house,  and,  possibly, 
at  the  works  of  art  inside  of  it,  to  say  nothing  of  availing 
themselves  of  the  hospitality  of  its  owners,  which  a  right 
attitude  of  mind  on  their  part  might  gain  for  them. 

It  has  to  be  acknowledged,  however,  that  sometimes  those 
in  the  palatial  residence  are  merely  planning,  through  its 
agency,  to  gain  for  themselves  a  physically  dominant  posi- 
tion in  society.  When  such  is  the  case,  some  members  of  the 
family  are  almost  certain  to  do  this  at  the  expense  of  be- 
coming out  of  sympathy  with  the  community.  Some  of 
them,  in  deference  to  what  they  choose  to  consider  due  to 
their  own  superiority,  may  acquire  a  habit  of  cutting  the 
acquaintance  of  the  poor,  even  if  among  their  former  inti- 
mate friends,  and  near  relatives.  In  this  way,  antagonism 
is  apt  to  be  cultivated  between  different  classes  of  society, 
lessening  whatever  tendencies  any  class  may  feel  to  give 


230  E  THICS  AND  NAT  URAL  LA  W 

expression  to  the  mental  traits  of  geniality  and  humanity. 
The  large  house  often  exerts  a  bad  influence,  too,  through 
causing  neighbors  who  cannot  afford  the  expense  to  desire 
one  equally  costfy;  and  this,  if  erected,  may  saddle  them 
with  a  debt  that  ultimately  causes  them  to  lose  the  most, 
perhaps,  of  what  they  possess;  or  to  visit  this  result  upon 
their  children.  If  there  be  many  of  these,  no  one  of  them 
can  continue  to  live  in  the  style  to  which  he  became  habit- 
uated in  his  youth;  and  the  main  part  of  what  he  inherits 
in  life  may  be  merely  disappointment  and  discontent. 

If  one  have  been  so  situated  as  to  acquire,  or  to  inherit, 
a  large  fortune,  there  are  plenty  of  ways  in  which  he  can 
spend  it  so  as  to  gratify  a  great  deal  more  than  mere  bodily 
or  physical  desire.  Why  should  one  confine  his  sense  of 
possession,  to  speak  only  of  this,  to  that  which  is  behind  the 
door  of  his  own  house,  or  the  gate  of  his  own  yard?  Why 
should  he  not  include  very  much  more  of  that  which  can  be 
found  in  his  own  town  or  county?  He  often  could  and 
would  do  this,  if  he  had  made  others,  in  any  way,  recipients 
of  his  benefactions.  One  cannot  contribute  to  the  happiness, 
the  education,  the  elevation  of  other  people  without  begin- 
ning to  take  a  personal  interest  in  them,  and  the  larger 
the  number  that  are  thus  benefited,  the  larger  will  be  the 
number  of  his  interests.  Why  should  he  be  willing  to  limit 
these  to  the  narrow  vision  and  selfish  possibilities  of  a  beast 
in  a  cave,  when  broad  outlook  and  unselfish  activity  might 
give  him  a  sense  of  fellowship  not  only  with  multitudes  of 
men  but  with  God?  Instead  of  erecting  one  palace  for  him- 
self and  his  family,  he  might  build  many  cottages  for  work- 
ing people  equipped  with  every  convenience.  Instead  of 
laying  out  a  little  front  yard  for  himself,  he  might  provide 
large  playgrounds  and  parks  for  all  his  townspeople;  or  he 
might  build  and  equip  art  galleries,  libraries,  schools,  col- 
leges, asylums,  hospitals,  and  churches.  There  are  no  ends 
of  ways  in  which  he  might  spend  millions  without  involving 
even  a  suggestion  of  the  evils  that  follow  upon  household 
extravagance,  moneyed  aristocracy,  and  social  ostracism. 

Now  let  us  consider  the  pleasures  or  recreations  in  which 
people,  after  they  have  built  their  houses,  usually  indulge. 
First  of  all,  in  feasting, — perfectly  legitimate  so  far  as  it 
does  not  lead  to  such  things  as  wastefulness,  gormandizing, 
and  intemperance.  What  does  or  does  not  involve  these 
must  be  left  to  the  good  judgment  of  each  host  and  guest. 


BANQUETING  231 

But  it  is  always  important  to  get  behind  the  viewpoint  of 
the  savage  sufficiently  to  bear  in  mind  that  one's  object, 
when  tendering  a  feast,  may  be  not  physical  but  mental; 
not  to  fill  a  greedy  stomach,  but  to  give  expression  to  a 
generous  spirit.  This  conception  undoubtedly  lies  behind 
a  custom  attributed  to  Clemenceau,  that  "grand  old  man," 
the  premier  of  France  at  the  time  of  the  recent  war.  It  is 
said  that  owing  mainly  to  his  age,  he  usually  takes  his  own 
food  with  him  when  invited  out  to  dinner, — a  fact  illus- 
trated in  an  overheard  question  which  he  addressed  to  a 
waiter, — "Where  are  my  noodles? "  A  few  years  ago  there 
were  in  Washington  two  eminent  men,  approaching  old  age, 
who  were  widely  entertained  at  dinner  parties.  One  was  re- 
ported to  have  gone  to  ninety-six  of  these  in  one  hundred 
nights,  eating  heartily  at  each,  and  then  he  died.  The  other 
went  to  almost  as  many,  but  those  who  sat  near  him  observed 
that  he  ate  very  little.  He  was  always  talking;  he  made  of 
the  whole  a  psychical  performance;  and,  when  the  season 
was  over,  he  was,  apparently,  in  better  health  than  when  it 
opened.  So  in  the  case  of  social  teas  and  receptions,  and  all 
other  agencies  that  tend  to  physical  excess  and  fatigue.  In 
the  degree  in  which  each  can  be  made  mental,  it  can  be  made 
endurable  and,  in  the  best  meaning  of  the  term,  enjoyable. 

Next,  perhaps,  among  the  entertainments  furnished  in 
the  home,  is  dancing.  This  is  a  natural  expression  of  health- 
ful and  buoyant  vitality  and  joy,  made  artistic  by  accom- 
paniments of  melody  and  rhythm.  How  anyone  can  think 
that  in  itself  this  form  of  amusement  is  wrong,  is  inconceiv- 
able, unless  he  have  a  theory  in  accordance  with  which  he 
considers  everything  wrong  that  is  pleasurable,  artistic,  or 
beautiful.  But  this  remark  does  not  apply  to  all  forms  of 
dancing.  It  applies  to  such  forms  only  as  do  not  allow 
the  bodily  to  subordinate  the  mental.  The  old-fashioned 
Sailors'  Hornpipe,  Highland  Fling,  and  Double  Shuffle  ap- 
peared to  be  pleasurable  modes  of  natural  expression  con- 
formed to  the  requirements  of  art.  So  with  the  Reel,  the 
Quadrille,  the  Lancers,  and  the  Morris  Dances.  The  one 
chief  impression  conveyed  by  all  of  these  was  predominant- 
ly mental.  Every  bodily  movement  necessitated  by  them 
seemed  interesting  mainly  because  of  the  overflow  of  exube- 
rant individual  activity  rendering  it  characteristic  of  per- 
sonal thought  and  feeling.  Unfortunately,  the  same  cannot 
be  said  of  much  of  our  modern  dancing.    It  would  be  diffi- 


232  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

cult  to  devise  anything  more  essentially  vulgar  and  vile  than 
some  of  the  performances  associated  or  allied  with  what  are 
termed  the  * '  tango ' '  or  the  ' '  hug. ' '  Only  degenerates  could 
originate  them,  and,  once  made  fashionable,  only  those 
incapable  of  forming  independent  moral  judgments  could 
perpetuate  them, — they  so  violate  the  first  principles  of 
propriety.  How  people  can  tolerate  in  a  couple,  when  danc- 
ing, attitudes  and  movements  that  would  insure  their  imme- 
diate expulsion  from  the  room,  if  they  were  sitting,  is  simply 
inconceivable.  In  former  times,  young  people  were  taught 
how  to  keep  apart  when  dancing.  Now  many  dancing  schools 
teach  them  how  to  cling  together.  The  result  sometimes 
goes  altogether  beyond  a  mere  tendency  to  vice.  A  father, 
who,  fortunately,  lives  on  terms  of  intimacy  with  his  son, 
described  to  the  author  once  the  loathing  for  himself  that 
the  boy  expressed  one  night  when  he  came  home  from  a 
high-school  ball.  Another  boy  of  the  same  age,  referring  to 
this  experience,  simply  said,  "That  is  what  it  is  for."  And 
yet  many  society  women  encourage  this  sort  of  thing,  not 
only  in  hotels  and  clubs  but  in  their  own  homes!  How 
thankful  we  ought  to  be  that  there  are  left  in  the  world  a 
few  school-boys,  and,  as  indicated  in  the  note  at  the  bot- 
tom of  this  page,20  politicians  and  military  men  who  can 
give  us  a  higher  mental  ideal ! 

Next  to  dancing,  as  a  method  of  social  entertainment, 
comes,  perhaps,  card  playing.  The  innocent  form  of  this, 
just  as  in  the  case  of  dancing,  is  where  the  mental,  in  the 
sense  of  the  rational  motive,  is  uppermost,  where  the  par- 
ticular thing  done  is  merely  an  agency  of  relaxation  and 
sociability  used  to  bring  about  a  greater  union  of  thought 
and  feeling.  But  when  the  game  is  treated  seriously  and 
played  for  its  own  sake,  and  with  wagers  that,  if  forfeited, 
involve  real  loss,  then  we  have  the  beginning  of  the  vice  of 
gambling.     A  professor  of  ethics  of  thirty  years'  standing 

30  "Newport,  R.  I.,  March  9,  1918. — War  measures  in  Newport  have 
spread  to  dancing:  by  an  order  of  the  board  of  aldermen  to  protect  the 
men  in  uniform  from  influences  not  promoting  the  life  of  a  sailor  or  a 
seaman.  Conspicuously  posted  in  the  hall  where  society  dances  were 
the  following  directions  in  big  letters:  '  No  ragging.  No  shivers.  No 
mugging  (cheek  to  cheek).  Daylight  zone  between  partners.  The 
man's  guiding  arm  should  be  extended  laterally.  The  man's  supporting 
arm  should  be  placed  midway  up  his  partner's  back.  The  girl's  left 
arm  should  be  placed  on  her  partner's  shoulder,  and  not  clasped  about 
his  neck.'" — Washington  Post. 


GAMBLING  233 

told  the  author  once  that  he  did  "not  know  exactly  why 
gambling  is  wrong, — why  a  man,  if  he  wants  to  play  with 
what  he  himself  owns,  has  not  a  right  to  do  so;  that,  of 
course,  one  could  say  that  he  sets  a  bad  example  and  tempts 
people  to  play  who  cannot  afford  it";  but  "suppose  that  he 
never  plays  with  such  people?"  The  answer  to  a  question 
like  this  which  accords  with  the  theory  of  this  book  must 
be  begun  with  the  statement  that  a  man  should  never  put 
himself  under  physical  conditions  over  which  his  mind  or  his 
rational  nature  can  exercise  no  control. 

To  gamble  or  to  bet  is  to  do  wrong  for  the  same  reason  as 
to  get  drunk,  to  yield  to  passion,  or,  except  when  some  ex- 
traordinary emergency  demands  it,  to  allow  oneself  to  be 
hypnotized.  A  man  should  never  let  any  influence  clearly 
outweigh  the  thoughtful  and  rational.  He  is  doing  this  when, 
in  a  practical  matter,  involving  gain  or  loss  to  himself,  he 
ceases  to  exercise  his  own  psychical  reason  and  judgment, 
and  permits  the  result  to  be  determined  by  the  operation 
of  the  merely  physical  forces  by  which  he  is  surrounded. 
All  the  evils  that  follow  upon  gambling  are  traceable  to  this 
primary  surrender  of  mental  control.  To  it  is  owing  the 
discredit  that  gambling  throws  upon  human  labor,  which  is 
the  only  legitimate  way  in  which  a  man  can  ordinarily 
obtain  money;  upon  reasonable  purchase,  which  is  the  only 
legitimate  way  in  which  money  can  ordinarily  be  expended ; 
and  upon  sensible  economy  and  saving,  which  are  the  only 
ordinary  means  of  assuring  permanent  support  for  oneself 
and  family.  A  gambler  plays  with  his  piece  of  silver  like  a 
monkey.  He  does  not  use  it  like  an  intelligent  being  made 
for  calculation  and  foresight.  It  is  for  this  reason  that, 
after  a  while,  he  frequently  finds  that  he  has  fitted  himself 
for  nothing  better  than  to  bring  shame  or  poverty  upon  his 
friends  and  family  or  to  commit  theft  or  suicide.  There  is  no 
possibility  of  making  a  computation  of  all  the  irrational, 
selfish  and  inhumane  consequences  that  may  result  after 
one  has  surrendered  the  form  of  control  over  his  own  destiny 
which  it  is  his  privilege  and  duty  as  the  possessor  of  a  mind 
to  exercise. 

One  of  the  worst  features  of  the  vice  is  found  in  its  asso- 
ciations. Almost  invariably  the  forms  of  it  connected  with 
card  playing  and  pool  playing  are  accompanied  by  frequent 
draughts  of  strong  drink  which  tend  to  create  a  drunkard's 
habit.     The  same  is  true  in  connection   with  betting   at 


234  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

2l  horse  show  or  automobile  race.  The  latter,  drawing 
together,  as  it  does,  thousands  of  spectators  intent  often 
upon  being  thrilled  by  the  anticipated  possibility  of  the 
maiming  or  killing  of  some  driver  tempted  to  risk  his  life 
for  the  sake  of  money  spent  usually  to  increase  the  reputa- 
tion of  some  mercenary  manufacturer,  is  one  of  the  most 
demoralizing  entertainments  that  the  world  has  ever  known, 
— only  a  few  stages  behind  the  degree  of  debasement  that 
led  to  the  gladiatorial  shows  of  ancient  Rome.  It  should  be 
prohibited  by  law.  Nothing  can  be  worse  than  a  deliberate 
attempt  to  brutalize  the  instincts  of  a  community  by  bribing 
in  such  a  way  as  to  lure  toward  death  certain  of  the  mistaken 
though  often  most  enterprising  and  skillful  of  its  members. 

In  most  of  the  forms  of  enjoyment  that  have  been  men- 
tioned a  man  entertains  himself.  There  are  other  forms 
equally  important  in  which  he  is  entertained  by  others, — 
in  which  his  own  will  is  not  active  but  passive.  He  feels  and 
thinks  in  connection  with  what  someone  else  presents  to  his 
eyes  or  ears.  This  introduces  us  to  the  sphere  of  art.  But 
it  was  shown  on  page  22  that  it  is  the  thinking,  feeling  mind 
that  is  influenced  through  the  eyes  and  ears.  The  thought- 
ful, therefore,  must  always  be  an  element  in  the  effects 
of  art.  Other  considerations,  too,  show  this  to  be  the  case. 
Why  do  we  never  attribute  art  to  an  animal?  It  is  because 
of  the  absence  in  him  of  the  higher  mental  nature.  What- 
ever art  we  may  study,  its  expressional  possibility  seems 
its  primary  and  determining  characteristic.  That  this  is  so 
has  been  brought  out  in  what  is  said  on  page  142  of  the 
present  volume.  It  is  also  brought  out  in  all  the  author's 
volumes  on  comparative  aesthetics. 

Because  this  is  the  case,  the  reader  will  recognize  that  the 
fundamental  principle  of  morality  is  as  important  to  success 
in  art  as  in  any  other  department.  Those  therefore  who 
intend  to  praise  an  artist,  as  some  do,  when  they  term  him 
conscientious,  are  amply  justified.  To  be  conscientious,  as 
we  have  found,  is  to  keep  the  bodily  or  physical  from  out- 
weighing the  mental;  and  this  is  something  that  every  artist 
is  called  upon  to  do  in  connection  with  every  line,  color, 
tone,  or  word  that  he  uses.  He  chooses  and  arranges  each  so 
as  to  represent  such  thoughts,  emotions,  and  purposes  as 
seem  to  him  to  be  suggested  by,  because  expressed  through, 
the  physical  forms — together  with  what  seem  to  be  the 
laws   controlling  them — that    he   perceives  in  the  world 


THE  MENTAL  AND  MORAL  IN  ART  235 

surrounding  him.  The  aim  of  the  artist,  therefore,  though 
he  himself  may  not  always  be  able  to  explain  it,  or  even  to 
recognize  it  fully,  is  to  interpret,  at  the  same  time  that  he 
represents,  in  accordance  with  what  seem  to  be  the  require- 
ments Oi  truth,  that  which  is  revealed  to  him  in  external 
material  nature,  including,  of  course,  human  nature. 

The  principle  thus  stated,  has  an  important  bearing  in 
this  connection,  because  it  indicates  the  kind  of  art  that  a 
man  of  right  purpose  should  endeavor,  so  far  as  feasible,  to 
produce  or  to  patronize.  This  art  should  not  be  a  mere 
imitation  of  what  is  presented  in  nature;  nor  should  it  be  a 
mere  expression  of  thought  or  emotion  founded  on  an  im- 
pression received  from  nature,  irrespective  of  the  form  in 
which  it  has  been  presented  there.  Imitation  does  not  be- 
come art  except  in  the  degree  in  which  it  shows  the  psychi- 
cal effects  that  have  been  produced  upon  the  mind  by  what 
has  been  seen  or  heard;  and  a  representative  expression  of 
an  impression  does  not  become  art  except  in  the  degree  in 
which  it  shows  that  the  mental  suggestions  that  have  been 
received  are  due  to  sights  and  sounds  that  actual  experience 
can  prove  to  be  observable  in  nature. 

The  cultural  influences  that  thoughtful  people  attribute 
to  art,  and  which  cause  them  to  prize  it,  are  owing  solely  to 
its  fulfillment  of  these  two  conditions  thus  stated.  The 
results  that  are  merely  those  of  imitation,  expression,  or 
impression  may  at  times  produce  effects  that  are  interest- 
ing, suggestive,  or  curious,  but  they  can  never  produce  the 
finest  quality  of  art.  This  requires  the  exertion  of  a  man's 
finest  possibilities  of  perception  and  reflection.  The  product 
embodying  less  than  these  is  always  comparatively  frivolous 
and  superficial,  of  no  essential  value,  however  elaborately 
praised  by  people  whose  opinion  partakes  of  the  same  flip- 
pant quality.  There  is  so  much  in  art,  when  earnestly  and 
honestly  pursued,  to  increase  one's  knowledge,  to  broaden 
one's  sympathies,  to  stimulate  one's  imagination,  to  de- 
velop one's  ideality,  and  to  bring  one's  spirit  into  unity 
with  the  creative  life  and  purpose  behind  the  forms  and 
forces  about  him,  that  it  is  difficult  to  exercise  as  much 
charity  as  one  ought  to  possess  toward  the  mistaken  fad- 
dists who  seem  constantly  doing  all  that  lies  in  their  power 
to  degrade  and  demoralize  an  agency  fitted,  at  its  best,  to  be 
so  generally  beneficial. 

This  language  is  justified.     Near  the  beginning  of  the 


236  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

present  chapter  it  was  pointed  out  that  mental  emphasis 
is  given  to  the  human  form  by  a  method  of  personal  cloth- 
ing that  leaves  uncovered  only  the  face  and  the  hands.  It 
was  not  said,  however,  that  these  were  the  only  parts  of  the 
form  through  which  thought  and  emotion  can  be  expressed. 
In  the  author's  Orator's  Manual,  pages  125  to  151,  and  in 
Chapters  VII.  to  X.,  of  his  Painting,  Sculpture,  and  Architec- 
ture as  Representative  Arts,  it  is  shown  that  mental  life  and 
meaning  pervade  every  form  and  movement  of  the  physical 
body.  At  the  time  when  the  author  was  giving  attention  to 
this  subject,  he  could  frequently  obtain  important  informa- 
tion by  noticing  the  pose,  walk,  and  gestures  of  those  so  far 
away  from  him  that  the  expressions  of  mere  faces  and 
fingers  could  hardly  be  distinguished.  The  policeman  who 
gave  the  clew  that  led  to  the  discovery  of  those  who  blew 
up  the  printing  house  of  the  Los  Angeles  Times  in  191 1,  told 
the  author  that  his  whole  theory  which  was  taken  to  justify 
a  search  over  all  the  country  for  the  men  described  by  him 
who  were  subsequently  proved  to  be  the  criminals  was 
derived  from  seeing,  on  the  morning  preceding  the  disaster, 
two  entire  strangers  to  him  cross  a  street  that  was  fully  a 
mile  away  from  the  Times  building. 

For  the  reason  that  has  been  given,  every  part  of  the 
human  form  may  be  of  mental  interest,  and  therefore  of 
mental  value.  This  fact  justifies  in  art  a  degree  of  exposure 
of  the  whole  form  that  in  a  living  person  would  be  inexcus- 
able. The  marble  or  bronze  of  a  statue,  for  instance,  almost 
entirely  eliminates  the  physical  effect.  This  elimination  is 
less  marked  in  a  painting  because  of  the  presence  in  it  of  the 
colors  of  life;  but  in  all  constructed  products,  the  mental 
effect  of  the  skill  exhibited  in  the  portrayal  makes  the  whole 
result  far  less  physical  in  its  influence  than  it  would  be 
otherwise;  and,  frequently,  as  in  the  highest  works  of  art, 
the  mental  intention  of  the  whole  is  too  distinctly  repre- 
sented to  make  any  other  inference  from  it  logical.  There  is 
a  thoroughly  artistic  reason,  however,  why  an  artist  who 
wishes  to  exert  an  enduring  influence  upon  all  should  try  to 
select  such  arrangements  of  the  forms  at  his  disposal  as  to 
render  any  other  than  a  mental  inference  not  only  illogical 
but  impossible. 

There  is  a  closer  connection  between  morality  and  what 
has  thus  been  mentioned  with  reference  to  art  than  one 
might  naturally  suppose.     Because  some  statues  represent 


IMMODEST  EXHIBITIONS  237 

unclothed  human  forms,  what  is  to  be  said  of  those  who 
seriously  argue  that  this  condition  is  one  of  the  essentials 
that  renders  them  works  of  art  ?  and  who  maintain  that  any 
person  getting  himself  into  the  same  condition,  or  encourag- 
ing the  action  of  one  who  does  it,  is  furthering  the  interests 
of  art  ?  Yet,  in  our  country  there  are  women  dancers  who 
are  advertised  as  cultivating  artistic  taste  merely  because 
they  appear  in  public  clad  only  in  transparent  gauze,  and 
spend  the  time  at  their  disposal  in  an  apparent  endeavor, 
often  with  slight  manifestations  of  skill,  to  jump  out  even  of 
the  little  that  is  on  them.21  There  are  worse  forms  in  our 
country  of  the  same  tendency;  and,  so  far  as  statistics  are 
available,  few  women's  clubs,  supposed  to  be  intent  upon 
securing  the  uplift  of  their  sex,  have  made  any  protest 
against  them,  though  this  has  often  been  done  by  policemen, 
presumably  because  of  having  no  appreciation  of  art !  The 
forms  of  entertainment  to  which  reference  is  made  are  those 
furnished  by  certain  actresses  for  moving  pictures.  These 
consent  to  be  photographed  without  a  stitch  of  clothing  on 
them  and  sometimes  in  the  presence  of  hundreds  of  specta- 
tors; and  then  to  have  the  resulting  picture  witnessed  by 
millions  more  (see  footnote  2y,  page  285).  This  exhibition, 
which  necessarily  makes  such  an  appeal  to  most  of  the 
spectators  that  the  physical  entirely  subordinates  the  men- 
tal, is  represented  as  justified  because  it  is  art!  And  art, 
we  are  told,  can  never  be  immoral!  But  any  man  of  com- 
mon experience,  not  to  say  sense,  ought  to  know  that  an 
influence  that  cannot  fail  to  shock  many  people,  and  at  the 
same  time  blunt  their  mental  sense  of  modesty,  is  injuring  a 
very  delicate  constituent  of  the  aesthetic  nature;  and  that 
injury  to  it  involves  injury  to  other  constituents  equally 
delicate;  and  not  infrequently  may  involve  also  the  loss  of 
some  of  the  most  exquisite  as  well  as  elevating  experiences 
of  which  one  can  be  conscious. 

Of  course,  the  same  principle  that  applies  to  the  moving 
picture  applies  also  to  the  theater  and  opera.  No  contrasts 
could  be  greater  than  those  afforded  by  the  physical  effects 
thrust  into  prominence  through  an  intentionally  suggestive 

21  "New  York,  March  13,  1918. — Mayor  Hylan,  in  a  letter  to  Police 
Commissioner  Enright  to-day,  expresses  amazement  that  a  nude  dancer 
was  permitted  in  the  Metropolitan  Opera  House.  After  the  dance 
....  said:  'According  to  pure  art,  as  shown  by  its  statuary,  mostly 
of  the  dance,  there  is  nothing  lewd  about  the  nude. ' " — Washington  Post. 


238  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

lack  of  attire  augmented  by  the  vulgar  movements  and 
language  and  even — in  an  artistic  sense — music  of  some  of 
our  public  performances,  and  the  mental  effects  produced 
sometimes  by  the  same  companies  of  actors,  but  entirely 
different  because  of  studied  propriety  in  costumes,  artistic 
conceptions  of  beauty,  tasteful  arrangements  of  color  and 
pose,  carefully  executed  results  of  individual  and  concerted 
skill,  and  conscientiously  composed  music.  There  is  abso- 
lutely no  common  standard  in  accordance  with  which  one 
can  compare  the  efforts  of  mercenary  managers  or  actors  to 
conform  to  what  they  suppose  to  be  the  depraved  desires  of 
men,  and  the  efforts  of  those  who  contribute  to  the  healthful 
enjoyment  derivable  from  operas  like  those  of  Gilbert  and 
Sullivan  and  from  many  other  higher  forms  of  comedy, 
pantomime,  and  pageant.  One  who  seeks  to  keep  the  bodily 
subordinated  to  the  mental  will  always  try  to  manifest 
his  disapproval  of  any  vulgarity  that  befouls  innocent  fun. 
There  are  few  meaner  men  than  those  who  pander  to  vice; 
who  are  willing  to  make  money  by  poisoning  the  wells 
of  public  pleasure,  by  communicating  moral  disease  and 
death  to  him  who  comes  to  them  for  recreation.  But  next 
to  these  in  meanness  is  the  one  who  knowingly  patronizes 
the  person  or  the  place  where  this  sort  of  work  is  carried  on. 
In  the  higher  forms  of  the  drama,  whether  comedy  or 
tragedy,  as  also  in  the  novel  and  the  poem,  the  chief  depar- 
ture from  mental  requirements  is  usually  manifested  in  a 
disregard  of  truth.  Historically  considered,  this  latter  is 
always  the  source  of  whatever  mental  interest  one  has  in  the 
actions  and  experiences  of  those  surrounding  him.  It  is 
these  mainly  that  prompt  his  powers  of  observation  and 
imagination  to  produce  such  results  as  we  find  in  story- 
telling and  play  writing.  One  might  suppose,  therefore, 
that  all  novelists  and  dramatists  would  try  to  have  their 
works  continue  to  manifest  a  logical  development  of  the 
purpose  to  which  they  owe  their  origin.  But  writers  must 
draw  largely  upon  their  imagination  for  the  details  both  of 
their  methods  of  presentation  and  of  their  plots ;  and,  while 
doing  this,  it  is  difficult  for  them  to  resist  the  temptation 
to  sacrifice  that  which  they  have  found  to  be  true  in  life  to 
that  which  they  suppose  will  be  effective  when  presented  in 
art.  If  they  yield  to  the  temptation,  we  find  them  trying 
to  attract  and  hold  attention  through  portrayals  of  extra- 
ordinary and,  now  and  then,  impossible  actions  and  events, 


DRAMAS  AND  NOVELS  239 

chosen  in  hopes  that  they  may  appear  startling  and  exciting. 
Their  whole  object  sometimes  comes  to  be  the  producing  of 
a  sensation.  A  sensation  is  an  effect  excited  in  the  nerves ; 
and,  as  the  nerves  are  a  part  of  the  bodily  nature,  plays  or 
novels  intended  only  or  mainly  to  affect  them  may,  for  that 
reason  alone,  be  said  to  appeal  particularly  to  this  nature. 
But  there  is  another  and  a  better  reason  for  ascribing  to 
them  this  form  of  influence.  This  is  because  it  is  so  clearly 
devoid  of  any  traces  of  a  rational  and  non-selfish  desire  to 
increase  the  reader's  knowledge  of  the  true  conditions  of 
human  existence  and  of  what  is  demanded  in  order  to  de- 
velop its  best  possibilities.  The  highest  success  is  some- 
times represented  as  attained,  if  not  promoted,  through 
courses  of  conduct  which,  if  pursued  in  actual  life,  would 
ruin  a  person's  reputation  and  career.  Before  giving  any 
other  evidences  of  repentence  or  reformation,  the  worst  con- 
ceivable characters  are  represented  as  unexpectedly  mani- 
festing almost  every  conceivable  virtue.  Undoubtedly 
changes  in  character  do  take  place;  but  in  real  life  there  are 
mental  and  moral  reasons  for  them;  and  to  make  a  study  of 
these  reasons  is  one  of  the  most  important  and  interesting 
of  the  services  rendered  to  the  world  by  art  when  true  to 
life.  A  writer  of  novels  or  plays  who  does  not  recognize  this 
fact  may  cast  his  influence,  even  though  not  intending  it, 
on  the  side  of  immorality.  What  else  can  result  where 
wealth  is  represented  as  if  it  were  attained,  as  a  rule,  through 
dishonesty;  or  marriage  through  unchastity;  or  where  an- 
tagonism to  parents  is  represented  as  justified,  because 
they  object  to  having  their  son  go  into  partnership  with  a 
defaulter,  or  marry  a  harlot  ?  Forgiveness  is  undoubtedly  a 
duty;  and  the  world  needs  to  have  this  fact  emphasized. 
We  should  all  deal  kindly  with  the  fallen;  but  never  at  the 
expense  of  forming  intimacies  or  partnerships  involving 
one's  accepting  for  himself  or  others  standards  of  life  lower 
than  the  level  on  which  his  own  ideals  have  been  moving. 
It  is  poor  policy  to  make  one's  own  bed  in  a  gutter  in  order 
to  coax  others  to  get  out  of  it.  Almost  the  first  requisite 
for  one  who  would  save  the  fallen  is  to  preserve  his  own 
standing.  Otherwise,  he  will  not  be  in  a  position  to  lift 
them  up.  Neither  will  he  be  in  a  position  where  others 
like  himself  will  recognize  the  good  that  he  is  trying  to  do, 
and  come  to  his  assistance.  Those  in  need  of  reformation 
cannot  always  obtain  it  without  receiving  help  both  from 


240  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

the  individual  at  their  side  and  from  the  community.  In- 
dividual methods  will  suggest  themselves  to  the  considerate 
and  kindly  as  opportunities  open.  Public  methods  may  be 
furthered  by  exerting  one's  influence  in  the  enactment  of  laws 
like  those,  for  instance,  suggested  by  Judge  B.  B.  Lindsay, 
of  Colorado, — laws  transferring  certain  cases  of  moral  delin- 
quence  to  chancery  jurisdiction,  treating  the  perpetrators  of 
them  as  wards  of  the  commonwealth,  and  receiving  and  ex- 
amining in  secrecy  all  evidence  with  reference  to  them.  It 
is  only  right  that,  so  far  as  possible,  methods  of  this  charac- 
ter should  protect  at  least  the  young  from  ruinous  publicity, 
insure,  if  personal  injury  have  been  received,  the  care  of 
the  sufferer  at  the  expense  of  the  aggressor,  and,  if  pos- 
sible, rectify  all  wrongdoing  in  such  ways  as  to  avoid  social 
scandal  and  ostracism,  and  afford  a  remedy  complete  and 
permanent.  But  all  this  is  very  different  from  the  exploit- 
ing of  such  cases,  as  if  grievous  wrongs  against  society 
could  be  committed  without  occasioning  shame  to  their 
perpetrators;  or  as  if  there  were  no  need,  before  being  re- 
stored again  to  the  confidence  of  the  community,  of  their 
manifesting  what  John  the  Baptist,  in  Matt,  iii.,  8,  termed 
"fruits  meet  for  repentance." 


CHAPTER   XIX 

KEEPING    THE   MIND'S   DESIRES   UPPERMOST    IN   COMMERCIAL 
RELATIONS  BETWEEN  BUYERS  AND  SELLERS 

Importance  of  Business — Of  Developing  the  Traits  of  Character  Needed 
for  Success  in  it — How  Property  may  be  Acquired — Money  as  a 
Medium  of  Exchange — The  Object  of  Business  is  to  Exchange  what 
One  Has  for  what  Another  Has — Can  be  Conducted  in  Fulfillment 
of  Lower  or  of  Higher  Desire — Civilization  the  Result  of  the  Latter, 
Giving  Men  Confidence  in  One  Another — Honesty  Proved  the 
'  Best  Policy  by  People  who  have  Actually  been  Honest — Riches  not 
usually  the  Result  of  Extortion  but  of  Diligence,  Self-Denial,  and 
Saving — Examples — Successful  Men  usually  Keep  the  Bodily  Out- 
weighed by  the  Mental — Lack  of  Success  often  Due  to  Outside 
Circumstances — Often  Due  to  Men's  Own  Unacknowledged  De- 
ficiencies— The  highly  Rational  and  Humane  Man  Studies  and 
Gives  in  Exchange  what  Others  Need  and  Want — Large  Services 
of  this  Kind  Justly  Receive  Large  Recompense — Injurious  Lack  of 
Stimulus  to  Effort  where  this  Principle  is  not  Practiced  or  Accepted 
— Duty  of  the  Individual  to  Subordinate  his  Own  Interests  to  those 
of  the  Community. 

AFTER  leaving  school,  most  people  not  only  become 
members  of  society,  but  usually  engage  in  what,  in  a 
broad  sense,  may  be  termed  business.  The  majority 
do  this  in  order  to  obtain  a  livelihood,  and  all  would  be  wise 
to  do  it  though  for  nothing  else  than  to  obtain  an  interest 
in  life.  Business,  in  some  form,  necessarily  engages  a  large 
part  of  every  man's  attention.  By  means  of  it,  he  himself, 
or  someone  else  upon  whom  he  is  dependent,  is  obliged  to 
obtain  his  food,  clothing,  lodging,  and  almost  all  his  necessi- 
ties. Not  only  a  babe  but  a  grown  person  could  scarcely 
continue  to  live,  were  not  some  of  his  fellows  constantly 
working  for  him  in  farm  or  factory,  or  transporting  the 
products  of  each  to  market  or  shop  in  which  he  can  purchase 
them.  He  does  this  by  exchanging  what  he  himself  pro- 
duces, or  possesses,  for  what  others  produce  or  possess. 
Every  form  of  material  success  for  the  individual  or  the 

16  241 


242  E  THICS  A  ND  NA  T  URAL  LA  W 

community  depends  so  largely  upon  the  methods  in  which 
these  exchanges  are  conducted  that  the  moral  considera- 
tions having  especially  to  do  with  them,  like  sincerity,  frank- 
ness, truthfulness,  fairness,  justice,  and  honesty,  need  to  be 
scrupulously  regarded  and  particularly  emphasized.  It  is  re- 
markable how  soon  the  slightest  deviation  from  their  re- 
quirements excites  distrust  in  the  minds  of  others,  and  how 
the  slightest  regard  for  them,  as  in  the  case  of  an  employee 
who  never  fails  to  return  to  his  employer  a  stray  penny 
picked  up  on  a  floor,  causes  confidence.  Possession  of  that 
to  which  one  is  rightly  entitled  has  so  much  to  do  with  his 
ability  to  provide  for  the  comfort  and  prosperity  of  himself 
and  of  those  dependent  on  him,  that  he  cannot,  without 
almost  criminal  neglect,  disregard  any  tendency  to  deprive 
him  wrongly  of  any  part  of  it. 

The  wrong  methods  of  depriving  one  of  what  he  owns 
can  be  best  understood  after  recalling  for  a  moment  the 
right  methods  of  obtaining  it.  According  to  Francis  Way- 
land,  where  he  treats  of  the  Love  of  Man,  in  Part  II.,  Chapter 
III.,  of  his  Elements  of  Moral  Science,  "property  may  be 
orginally  acquired  like  unoccupied  land  and  the  wild  life 
inhabiting  it."  This  statement,  which  was  virtually  ac- 
cepted by  all  at  the  time  when  it  was  made,  would  be 
modified  by  certain  later  economists,  especially  Herbert 
Spencer  (Social  Statics,  Chapter  IX.,  ed.  1850)  and  Henry 
George  (Progress  and  Poverty,  Book  VII. ,  Chapter  I.,  ed. 
1879).  They  say  that  unoccupied  land  belongs  to  society 
(or  the  government),  and  that  the  private  possession  of  land 
which  is  essential  to  production  must  be  secured  under 
conditions  protecting  society's  original  right  to  it.  Way- 
land  goes  on  to  say  that  property  may  also  "be  acquired  by 
labor,  or  by  exchange,  by  gift,  by  will,  or  by  inheritance  under 
law.  But,  in  all  cases  of  transfer  of  ownership,  the  consent 
of  the  original  owner,  either  expressed  or  interpreted  by  so- 
iety,  is  necessary  to  render  the  transfer  morally  right.  And, 
lastly,  although  the  individual  may  not  have  acquired  a 
valid  title  to  property,  yet  mere  possession  is  a  sufficient  bar 
to  molestation,  unless  some  claimant  can  prefer  a  better 
title." 

According  to  the  same  author,  the  right  of  property  may 
be  violated  by  taking  it  "without  knowledge  of  the  owner,  or 
theft,"  or  "by  consent  violently  obtained,  or  robbery";  or, 
"by  consent  fraudulently  obtained,  or  cheating,"  as  by  the 


MAKING  MONEY  243 

false  pretenses  of  a  beggar,  or  of  a  deceptive  bargainer.  The 
same  principles  are  applicable  in  cases  of  lending  property, 
as  in  cases  of  total  transfer.  The  underlying  requirement  is 
that  there  should  be  no  deception  or  default  on  the  part 
either  of  the  owner  or  the  borrower.  The  property  must  be 
capable  of  producing  what  is  represented  by  the  one,  and 
must  be  used  only  for  the  purposes  represented,  for  the  time 
specified,  and  upon  the  conditions  indicated  by  the  other. 
To  quote  again  from  what  is  said  of  the  Rights  of  Property, 
in  Chapter  III.,  Section  IV.,  of  the  same  book.  "  If  I  hire  a 
farm,  I  am  entitled,  without  an  additional  charge  for  rent, 
to  all  the  advantages  arising  from  the  rise  in  the  price  of 
wheat,  or  from  my  own  skill  in  agriculture.  But  if  a  vein  of 
coal  be  discovered  on  the  farm,  I  have  no  right  to  the  benefit 
of  working  it,  for  I  did  not  hire  the  farm  for  this  purpose." 
It  is  mainly  to  the  conduct  of  the  dishonest  bargainer 
that  the  attention  of  an  ordinary  business  man  needs  to  be 
directed.  One  is  always  liable  to  have  dealings  with  some 
member  of  this  class,  and  not  infrequently  to  be  tempted 
himself  to  join  it.  This  is  because  most  people,  when  they 
think  of  business,  think  mainly  or  entirely  of  "  making 
money, "  i.e.,  of  increasing  the  amount  of  it  that  they  them- 
selves possess.  They  overlook  the  fact  that,  primarily, 
business  is  an  exchange  of  what  one  himself  produces  or 
possesses  for  what  another  produces  or  possesses.  Money — 
and  that  alone — is  merely  a  means  through  which  such  ex- 
changes can  be  conveniently  effected.  For  instance,  a 
farmer  who  wanted  a  watch  could  not  easily  take  a  carload 
of  wheat  around  with  him,  when  he  went  shopping,  and 
leave  it  on  a  watchmaker's  counter.  What  he  does,  there- 
fore, is  to  make  the  exchange  indirectly.  It  is  in  order  to 
do  this  that  civilized  people  have  come  to  use  a  piece  of  coin 
cast  from  gold,  silver,  copper,  or  nickel;  or  a  slip  of  paper 
printed  as  a  bank  note  or  check.  This  coin  or  paper  answers 
the  purpose  of  a  certificate,  stating,  in  the  case  of  the  farmer, 
for  instance,  how  much  his  grain  was  worth  to  those 
who  actually  received  it.  It  is  as  a  matter  of  convenience 
mainly  that  the  farmer  uses  this  certificate  in  the  form  of  a 
coin  or  bank  note  and  exchanges  it  for  the  watch.  Of  course, 
everybody  knows  that  the  paper  of  the  bank  note  has  no 
intrinsic  value.  It  is  the  promise  printed  upon  it  to  pay  a 
certain  amount  upon  its  presentation  at  a  bank  which  indi- 
cates that  it  represents  this  amount  of  value.  To  some,  but  to 


244  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

a  far  less,  extent  the  same  is  true  of  coin.  It  is  the  govern- 
ment impress  upon  copper,  nickel,  and  sometimes  even  upon 
silver  and  gold  that  determines  definitely  what  it  is  to  be 
considered  worth  when  used  as  a  medium  of  exchange. 

Of  course,  these  facts  are  not  new.  But  it  seems  worth 
while  to  recall  them  here  in  order  to  remind*the  reader  that, 
primarily,  the  object  of  buying  and  selling  is  not,  as  some 
suppose,  to  increase  the  amount  of  the  money  that  one 
possesses;  but  to  make  feasible  and  convenient  such  ex- 
changes of  products  between  different  persons  as  are  needed 
in  order  to  secure  their  welfare,  and  often,  indeed,  to  insure 
their  lives.  These  exchanges  are  innumerable  in  number, 
and,  in  making  them,  every  man  virtually  hires  an  innumer- 
able number  of  workers  whom  he  pays  for  their  services. 
Moreover,  as  he  is  supposed  to  return  an  equivalent  for 
what  he  gets,  he  himself  is  virtually  hired  and  paid  for  his 
services  by  an  equal  number  with  whom,  if  he  do  not  share 
his  products,  he  at  least  shares  his  possessions  that  are  the 
products  of  someone  else.  The  moment  that  we  recognize 
these  conditions,  we  ought  to  recognize  that  the  money  that 
passes  between  people  when  anything  is  purchased  or  sold 
is,  in  the  first  place,  a  token  or  representation  of  an  exchange 
of  products,  and,  in  the  second  place,  a  payment  for  the 
services  or  labor  of  the  one  through  whose  instrumentality 
the  products  are  obtained  or  the  exchange  effected. 

With  this  conception  of  the  object  of  business,  we  can 
understand  why  and  how  it  can  be  conducted  in  fulfillment 
of  either  lower  or  higher  desires,  i.e.,  in  an  immoral  or  a 
moral  way.  The  man  actuated  by  lower  desire  may  work 
solely  for  the  purpose  of  what  is  termed  "making  money." 
In  other  words,  because  the  conditions  of  life  are  such  that 
one  is  obliged  to  exchange  what  he  himself  possesses  for  other 
things  that  others  possess,  he  may  wrongly  avail  himself  of 
the  opportunity,  and  in  a  spirit  of  selfish  devotion  to  his  own 
greed  and  a  desire  to  increase  his  bodily  or  physical  posses- 
sions, he  may,  in  every  trade  that  he  makes,  for  himself  or 
others,  try  to  outwit  the  person  with  or  for  whom  he  bar- 
gains, and  thus  get  the  better  of  him,  and  receive  in  exchange 
or  wage  that  for  which  he  has  not  given  a  fair  equivalent. 
For  instance,  he  may  exaggerate  the  difficulty  or  expense  of 
purchasing  that  which  he  is  selling,  demanding  more  for  it 
than  the  market  price  at  which  he  is  aware  that  others  are 
selling  it;  or  he  may  misrepresent  its  character,  term  that 


BUSINESS  HONESTY  245 

pure  wool  which  he  knows  to  be  mainly  cotton,  or  a  part  of  a 
farm,  meadow  land,  when  it  is  really  a  marsh.  Of  course, 
business  conducted  according  to  such  methods  necessarily 
involves  an  almost  constant  manifestation  of  not  only  nega- 
tive insincerity,  unfrankness,  and  deceit  but  also  of  positive 
untruthfulness,  injustice,  and  unkindness;  together  with  the 
violation  of  many  other  of  the  moral  traits  mentioned  on 
page  189.  Yet  there  are  thousands  of  persons  who  both 
practice  and  commend  such  methods.  "Business  is  busi- 
ness, "  we  are  told,  and  by  this  is  meant  that  it  is  a  depart- 
ment of  activity  to  which  the  ordinary  laws  of  morality  or 
religion  cannot  be  made  to  apply.  But,  as  business  concerns 
the  largest  part  of  the  interest  and  occupation  of  almost 
every  man,  we  might  as  well  say  that,  to  the  majority  of 
men,  these  laws  are  matters  of  only  minor  interest. 

Fortunately,  however,  this  is  not  true.  To  most  men 
they  are  matters  of  the  very  greatest  interest.  If  it  were 
not  so,  they  would  not  have  developed  the  conditions  of 
trade — to  say  nothing  of  civilization — that  exist  at  the 
present  time.  These  are  the  results  of  men's  accepting  the 
representations,  the  statements,  and  the  promises  that  are 
made  to  them.  In  other  words,  they  are  the  results  of  men's 
having  confidence  in  one  another.  They  would  not  have 
this  confidence,  were  there  not  good  reasons  for  it.  They 
have  it  because  the  majority  of  men,  even  in  business,  are 
honest.  It  is  fair  to  conclude,  too,  that  they  are  honest 
because  actuated  by  principle,  because  conscience  causes 
them  to  recognize  that  it  is  their  duty  not  to  allow  desires 
prompting  them  to  seek  their  own  selfish  bodily  advantage 
to  outweigh  those  that  prompt  them  to  give  expression  to 
humane  unselfish  mentality. 

Of  course,  honesty  may  be  actuated  also  by  policy.  But 
no  one  could  have  discovered  it  to  be  the  best  policy  before 
many  had  begun  to  practice  it;  and  the  beginning  of  this 
practice,  as  of  everything  else  that  is  right,  must  be  attrib- 
uted to  higher  desire.22    There  is  no  objection,  however,  to 

23  An  illustration  of  this  statement  is  afforded  in  the  experience  of 
the  Elgin  National  Watch  Company,  organized  in  1864  with  the  father 
of  the  author,  B.  W.  Raymond  of  Chicago,  as  its  first  President.  As 
soon  as  this  company  began  to  earn  a  reasonable  percentage  on  its 
capital,  and  before  there  were  any  demands  for  such  action  on  the 
part  of  purchasers,  the  selling  price  of  the  watches  was  reduced.  This 
course  was  continued  year  after  year  with  the  result,  each  time,  of 


246  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

using  the  arguments  derivable  from  policy  to  confirm  the 
promptings  traceable  to  principle.  Undoubtedly  the  man 
who  is  sincere,  frank,  truthful,  just,  kind,  and  honest  will, 
in  the  end,  be  more  successful  in  business  than  will  the  one 
who  is  the  opposite.  Men  can  be  cheated  once  or  twice  by 
the  same  person,  but  not  a  large  number  of  times.  After 
that,  in  case  they  have  found  out  the  truth — and  they  usu- 
ally do  find  it  out — they  will  trade  with  others.  It  will  be 
observed,  therefore,  that,  as  a  rule,  the  profits  that  are  made 
by  a  sharp  and  deceitful  bargainer,  though,  now  and  then, 
disproportionately  large,  are  not  continuous  nor  cumulative, 
and  seldom  result  in  what  would  be  called  even  a  moderate 
fortune.  The  great  merchants  and  bankers  of  every  country 
are,  most  of  them,  scrupulously  honest,  as  much  so  in  giving 
the  last  penny  of  interest  due  from  them  to  others  as  in 
teaching  what  some  of  them  claim  to  be  a  needed  lesson  in 
integrity,  by  exacting  the  same  when  it  is  due  from  others  to 
themselves. 

Nor  do  most  of  the  men  who  become  rich  practice  ex- 
tortion. Comparatively  few  of  them  do  so.  Some  have 
inherited  money  which  has   given  them  a  start   in  life. 


largely  increasing  the  sales,  and  correspondingly  decreasing  the  cost 
of  each  product  of  the  larger  output.  The  method  pursued  proved  to 
be  the  best  policy;  but  that  it  was  this  could  never  have  been  found 
out  by  the  stockholders,  had  they  been  influenced  by  irrational  greed 
for  material  gain  rather  than  by  a  rational  desire  to  conform  their 
actions  to  the  psychological  workings  of  the  human  mind  and  spirit. 
As  a  fact,  the  first  promoters  of  this  enterprise  were  public  spirited 
in  doing  business,  interested  in  developing  the  possibilities  of  Ameri- 
can inventive  genius,  in  supplying  clean  and  attractive  work  for 
aesthetically  inclined  employees,  especially  women,  and  in  bringing 
watches  down  to  a  low  enough  price  to  enable  almost  everybody  to 
own  one.  In  fulfillment  of  analogous  purposes,  the  company,  years 
before  the  general  agitation  for  the  reforms,  adopted  the  eight  hour 
working  day  with  a  half -holiday  on  Saturday,  built  and  conducted 
for  the  use  of  the  workers  the  best  hotel  in  Elgin  with  reading,  library, 
music,  dancing,  and  smoking  rooms,  and  an  adjoining  gymnasium  with 
facilities  for  playing  tennis  and  golf;  instituted  free  medical,  nursing, 
and  hospital  emergency  service;  augumented  by  fifty  per  cent,  the 
sums  paid  by  employees  for  the  establishment  of  Aid,  Mortuary,  and 
Pension  Funds;  and  have  lately  organized  an  Advisory  Council  of 
Workmen.  Is  it  strange  that,  in  such  a  company,  there  should  be 
among  the  employees  large  numbers  of  high  school  graduates,  and  not 
a  few  college  graduates?  The  author  knows  of,  at  least,  one  of  these 
who  went  from  a  by  no  means  commanding  position  in  this  establish- 
ment to  an  important  professorship  in  the  East. 


SERVING  AND  SAVING  247 

Possibly  this  money  may  have  been  obtained  in  the  past 
through  extortion;  but  the  very  fact  that  it  has  been  in- 
herited shows  that  its  present  possessor,  at  least,  did  not  so 
obtain  it.  The  majority  of  the  rich  in  our  country,  especially 
of  the  very  rich,  have  been  poor  boys  who  have  begun  their 
careers  with  scarcely  a  penny  to  call  their  own.  How  did 
they  get  more?  By  practicing  fraud  and  deceit?  Not  so 
often  in  this  way  as  by  manifesting,  under  all  conditions 
of  temptation,  truthfulness  and  honesty.  If  they  had  not 
done  this  latter,  they  seldom  would  have  been  promoted  to 
a  higher  position  than  their  first  one.  This  implies  that 
from  the  very  start  they  began  to  exercise  that  rational 
mentality  that  lies  at  the  basis  of  all  true  success  in  life. 
They  revealed  an  interest  in  their  work,  showing  that  they 
were  putting  their  minds  into  it.  Because  this  was  the  case, 
they  were  observant  too.  They  noticed  what  was  needed 
as  well  as  what  was  enjoined,  and,  very  soon,  someone 
recognized  that  they  had  a  power  of  initiative  that  would 
prove  beneficial  if  transferred  to  a  larger  and  broader  field. 
Meantime,  even  when  receiving  a  small  salary,  they  had 
learned  that  the  only  money  that  a  man  can  be  said  to 
possess — as  when  one  speaks  of  what  he  is  worth — is  that 
which  he  has  saved,  or  which  a  father  or  someone  else  has 
saved  for  him.  So  they  began  at  once,  in  order  to  increase 
their  possessions  even  by  a  very  little,  to  deny  themselves 
certain  indulgences,  as  in  smoking,  feasting,  riding,  and  sight- 
seeing. It  requires  only  one  dollar  a  week  deposited  in  a 
savings  bank,  giving  4  per  cent,  compound  interest,  to  bring 
one  at  the  end  of  twenty  years  sixteen  hundred  and  twelve 
dollars;  and  only  five  dollars  a  week  to  bring  him,  at  the 
end  of  the  same  period,  eight  thousand  dollars.  Whatever 
one  may  save  thus,  and  whatever  it  may  bring,  the  fact  that 
a  man  has  saved,  at  least  a  little,  is  often  the  one  thing  that 
enables  him  to  avail  himself  of  a  great  opportunity  when  it 
is  offered  to  him. 

The  author  once  knew  a  cash  boy  in  a  drygoods  store 
whose  widowed  mother  had  no  means  of  support  except 
himself.  He  became  an  expert  salesman  in  its  wholesale 
department;  and  a  new  firm,  backed  by  abundant  capital, 
offered  him  either  a  salary  of  five  thousand  dollars  a  year 
or,  notwithstanding  his  own  lack  of  capital,  a  partnership 
with  a  certain  share  in  the  profits,  in  case  there  were  any. 
The  first  question  asked  by  a  successful  merchant  whom 


248  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

the  young  salesman  consulted  was  this:  "Have  you  saved 
enough  money  to  support  your  mother  for  a  year  or  two,  in 
case  the  profits  of  the  firm  are  nothing?"  The  young  man 
said  that  he  had.  "Then  take  the  partnership,"  was  the 
advice.  The  young  man  did  this,  and  at  the  end  of  the  first 
year  reported  several  thousand  dollars  as  his  share  of  the 
profits.  He  added  this  to  the  capital  of  the  firm,  and  in 
about  twenty  years  more,  almost  before  he  had  reached 
middle  life,  he  had  retired  from  business  with  over  a  million 
dollars. 

Thousands  of  instances  of  a  very  similar  kind  could 
be  cited.  They  all  prove,  contrary  to  the  opinion  that  is 
often  expressed,  that  even  business,  allied  as  it  is,  in  many 
of  its  features,  to  that  which  is  material  and  physical,  may 
be  controlled,  just  as  is  the  case  with  everything  else  in  this 
world,  by  the  mental  and  rational.  As  a  rule,  no  man  can 
attain  business  success  through  physical  indulgence,  in- 
dolence, shiftlessness,  thoughtlessness,  or  indifference  to  the 
permanent  welfare  either  of  himself  or  of  others.  He  must, 
at  every  stage  of  his  progress,  manifest  thoughtful  self- 
denial,  industry,  carefulness,  foresight;  and  both  the  spirit 
and  ability  always  and  everywhere  to  be  helpful,  if  not  in- 
dispensable, to  his  fellows. 

Of  course,  it  is  not  true  that  everyone  who  manifests  some 
of  these  traits,  or  all  of  them  together,  will  be  successful. 
This  is  a  world  in  which  misjudgment,  accident,  sickness, 
fraud,  fire,  flood,  and  countless  other  agencies  are  con- 
stantly thwarting,  in  the  most  unexpected  ways,  the  results 
of  the  keenest  foresight,  the  wisest  calculation  and  the  most 
cautious  management.  But  if  one  cannot  predict  business 
success  with  certainty  to  those  who  manifest  such  qualities, 
he  can,  at  least,  do  the  opposite.  He  can  predict  a  lack  of 
success  to  those  who  do  not  manifest  them. 

The  number  of  such  people  in  the  world — people  who  fail 
to  fulfill  one  or  more,  if  not  all,  of  these  requirements — is, 
unfortunately,  very  great.  Like  most  of  us,  too,  they  are 
seldom  able  to  see  their  own  defects,  or  to  appreciate  the 
excellences  of  those  who  differ  from  them.  They  think 
that  they  themselves  have  as  good  a  right  to  success  as  any- 
one: and  that,  if  another  have  attained  it,  and  they  have  not, 
he  has  in  some  way  been  given,  or  has  taken,  an  unfair 
advantage.  It  is  with  them  mainly  that  the  opinion  is 
originated  and  fostered  which  attributes  the  acquisition  of 


LARGE  BUSINESS  PROFITS  249 

wealth  to  mere  luck,  or,  if  to  anything  else,  to  unworthy 
qualities  which  are  added  to  this,  like  deceit  and  dishonesty. 
Such  conceptions,  applied  without  discrimination,  are  not  in 
accordance  with  facts,  and  often  do  great  harm  to  those  who 
are  influenced  by  them.  They  prevent  people  from  per- 
ceiving or  imitating  certain  psychical  qualities  that  all  men 
need.  Too  often  the  unscrupulous  politician,  aided  by  the 
demagogic  editor,  so  poisons  public  sentiment  that  a  man 
is  discredited  for  the  very  reason  that  ought  to  make  him 
lauded;  and  his  opinion  and  advice  are  rejected  simply 
because  his  achievements  have  proved  him  to  be  wise. 

To  show  what  is  meant,  let  us  go  back,  for  a  moment,  to 
first  principles.  On  page  241  it  was  said  that  the  most  ap- 
parent object  of  business  is  to  enable  men  to  exchange  with 
one  another  their  products  or  possessions.  If  this  be  so,  the 
successful  business  man  must  be  the  one  who  does  the  most 
to  facilitate  such  exchanges;  who  finds  out,  through  investi- 
gation or  surmisal,  what  people  desire;  and  then,  availing 
himself  of  the  possibilities  of  husbandry,  manufacture,  or 
transportation,  carries  this  to  them,  and  receives  from  them 
in  exchange,  and  carries  to  other  people  what  they,  in  turn, 
desire.  He  thus  confers  a  needed  favor  upon  each  party 
that  shares  in  the  exchange;  and  he  deserves,  because  he  has 
earned,  the  percentage  which,  as  a  rule,  they  are  glad  to 
give  him  as  a  commission  for  enabling  them  to  make  their 
exchanges.  When  a  man,  owing  to  his  methods  of  truth- 
fulness, honesty,  industry,  alertness,  self-denial,  saving,  or 
foresight  in  deciding  upon  investments,  has  gained  a  few 
thousand  dollars,  then  he  is  often  in  a  position  where  his 
investigations  and  surmisals  with  reference  to  what  people 
desire  will  enable  him,  through  acting  as  a  medium  of 
exchange  between  them,  to  gain  very  much  more. 

Men  who  do  not  think  may  suppose  it  to  be  as  clear  as  an 
axiom  that  he  has  no  right  to  receive  as  exceptional  an 
amount  as  he  does  for  his  services.  This  is  true  in  some 
cases.  But  it  is  not  true  in  all  cases.  It  should  be  remem- 
bered that  great  undertakings  involve  great  risks,  and  need 
a  large  margin  of  profit  to  replace  possible  losses.  Besides 
this,  the  benefit  derived  from  the  initiative,  the  invention 
and  the  industry  of  such  men  is  often  large,  and  deserves  a 
large  reward;  and  this  not  only  that  they  may  be  compen- 
sated for  their  own  labors,  but  that  others  like  them  may 
be  stimulated  to  attempt  achievements  of  a  similar  charac- 


250  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

ter.  Just  in  the  degree  in  which  a  community  lessens  the 
possibility  of  a  man's  receiving  great  honors  or  emoluments 
for  great  public  services,  it  lessens  the  probability  of  de- 
riving these  from  younger  men,  who  in  time,  shall  take 
his  place.  The  people  of  Australia  are  said  to  have  suc- 
ceeded better  than  those  of  our  country  in  reducing  the 
possibility  of  one's  acquiring  more  possessions  and  promi- 
nence than  falls  to  the  common  lot.  But  it  is  also  said  that 
the  most  evident  way  in  which  that  country  differs  from 
ours  is  in  the  comparatively  small  number  of  the  young  who 
attend  high  schools  and  colleges.  Why  should  they  attend 
these?  Why  should  anyone  try  to  fit  himself  for  a  higher 
position  in  a  country  in  which  the  laws  are  so  formed — if, 
indeed,  this  be  true — as  to  lessen  the  number  of  such  posi- 
tions, and,  if  possible,  to  prevent  the  attainment  even  of 
these?  Where  untrained  and  unskilled  men,  owing  to  an 
influence  exerted  through  a  majority  vote,  can  do  just  as 
well  in  life  as  can  those  who  are  the  opposite,  what  induce- 
ment is  there  for  a  young  person  to  spend  time,  money,  and 
energy  in  obtaining  schooling  and  experience?  And  yet  the 
business  of  a  country  should  be  conducted  in  ways  con- 
forming to  the  results  of  information  and  intelligence.  To 
accomplish  this  end,  schooling  and  experience  on  the  part 
of  some  are  necessary;  and,  in  order  to  make  them  realize 
this  fact,  it  seems  necessary  to  cause  them  to  anticipate 
larger  salaries  than  they  would  earn  had  they  not  taken  the 
trouble  to  study  hard  in  order  to  fit  themselves  for  the 
larger  service  demanded. 

What  people  sometimes  forget,  but  should  always  bear 
in  mind,  is  that  the  education  which  the  young  are  thus 
stimulated  to  receive  benefits  not  only  themselves  but  the 
entire  community.  Our  national  government  educates 
certain  young  men  at  the  West  Point  Military  Academy, 
not  in  order  to  enable  them  in  the  future  to  take  social  and 
public  rank  as  majors,  colonels,  and  generals,  though  this 
is  an  incidental  result,  but  in  order  that  the  nation,  in  case 
of  war,  may  have  men  of  sufficient  military  intelligence 
to  prevent  it  from  being  destroyed.  The  same  principle 
is  applicable  in  commercial  and  industrial  relations;  and 
it  is  only  uttering  a  platitude  to  say  that  all  connected 
with  these,  just  as  citizens  connected  with  a  country  that 
needs  to  be  defended,  should  recognize  the  fact.  They 
should  not  judge  of  conditions  solely  as  they  affect  their 


PLEASURE  IN  ANOTHER'S  SUCCESS  251 

own  selfish  and  personal  wishes  but  as  related  to  the  body 
of  society  with  which  they  are  associated.  It  is  not  too 
much  to  expect  of  them,  if,  in  any  regard,  they  can  detect 
more  evidences  of  education,  experience,  or  efficiency  in 
another  man  than  in  themselves,  that  they  should  feel  grati- 
fied rather  than  humiliated  when  this  other  man  rises  to  a 
position  of  greater  influence  and  emolument  than  their  own. 
They  ought  to  recognize  that,  on  the  whole,  this  is  as  it 
should  be.  Their  attitude  of  mind  should  be  the  same  as 
was  that  of  a  friend  of  the  author  toward  work  in  the  late 
war.  He  was  a  student  in  a  military  school,  and  enlisted 
as  a  private  on  the  day  that  he  was  twenty-one,  refusing  to 
let  his  father  use  the  influence  which  possibly  might  have 
been  exerted  so  as  to  get  him  commissioned  as  an  officer. 
He  said  that  he  did  not  want  to  be  an  officer  unless  he  could 
prove  practically  that  he  ought  to  be  one.  This  is  an  ex- 
ample of  not  allowing  bodily  and  self-seeking  considerations 
to  outweigh  those  that  are  mental  and  altruistic.  Think 
what  a  contrast  it  presents  to  that  of  too  many  others 
whom  we  are  obliged  to  meet  in  this  world!  How  large  is 
the  number  of  those  otherwise  fitted  to  be  leaders,  perhaps, 
toward  all  that  is  best  in  life,  who  seem  hardly  able  to  utter 
a  sentence  without  revealing  so  many  evidences  of  under- 
lying desire  to  attain  their  own  physical  advancement,  to- 
gether with  such  suggestions  of  personal  envy,  jealousy, 
and  greed,  that  it  is  well-nigh  impossible  to  refrain  from  a 
certain  feeling  of  contempt  for  them,  so  completely  do  their 
whole  characters  seem  to  be  dominated  by  that  which  is 
prompted  by  their  lowest  and  most  selfish  desires!  Indeed, 
not  seldom  the  high  places  which  others  are  seen  to  reach 
so  affect  a  man  of  this  character  that,  to  judge  from  his 
own  words  and  deeds,  he  would  be  willing,  instead  of  fol- 
lowing their  examples  and  climbing  the  stairways  that  they 
have  built  for  his  use,  to  pull  down  the  whole  structure  of 
civilization  with  every  result  of  science  or  art  attained  by 
the  great  thinkers  and  toilers  of  the  past,  under  the  de- 
luded supposition  that  his  mind  created  to  be  inspired  by 
the  highest  desires  could  be  satisfied  when,  without  taking 
one  step  to  lift  himself  upward,  he  could  stand  upon  the 
fallen  towers  and  turrets  because,  forsooth,  they  had  all 
been  levelled  to  the  common  dirt  in  which  ne  and  his  kind 
prefer  to  grovel. 


CHAPTER   XX 

KEEPING    THE    MIND'S    DESIRES    UPPERMOST    IN    INDUSTRIAL 
RELATIONS   BETWEEN   EMPLOYERS  AND   EMPLOYEES 

Mental  Desire  as  Manifested  in  Relations  between  Employers  and 
Employees — Once  the  Former  Used,  and  the  Latter  Obeyed,  Force 
alone,  as  if  each  Possessed  only  a  Physical  Nature — Both  can  best 
Further  One  Another's  Interests  by  Acting  out  the  Promptings  of 
the  Mental  Nature — Former  and  Present  Relations  between 
Employers  and  Employees — Right  Relations  between  the  two 
Fundamentally  Connected  with  that  which  Determines  Moral 
Character — Both  Parties  Ignore  this  Fact — When  they  Perceive 
and  Act  upon  it,  the  Labor  Problem  will  be  Solved — Demands  of 
Labor  in  England — Cannot  Accomplish  All  that  is  Required — 
Industrial  Liberty  as  Applied  to  our  Own  Country — Different  Con- 
ceptions of  it — Why  the  Granting  of  it  is  Opposed — How  it  might 
be  Granted — And  Increase  Industrial  Efficiency — Would  be  better 
Done  by  Contract  than  by  Government  Action — Other  Mental 
Methods  that  can  be  Used  by  Employers — Same  Principles  Applied 
to  Employees — The  Importance  of  Enjoying  One's  Work — The 
Cheerful  and  Interested  Worker  is  the  One  who  Receives  Promo- 
tion— The  Labor  Agitator  Urging  the  Use  of  Force  is  often  the 
Laborers'  Worst  Enemy — Mental  Influence,  not  Physical  Force,  the 
Means  of  Securing  Permanently  Beneficial  Results. 

THOSE  who  are  engaged  in  business  always  belong, 
as  related  to  one  another,  to  one  of  two  classes,  or 
both;  they  are  either  employers  or  employees,  or 
else,  as  frequently  happens,  others  are  working  for  them  at 
the  same  time  that  they  are  working  for  others.  Is  there 
any  principle  of  conduct,  which,  if  carried  out,  can  make 
both  employers  and  employees  act  in  business  relations 
truthfully,  honestly,  fairly,  and  justly?  Why  not?  Why 
cannot  this  end  be  accomplished  by  the  principle  that  has 
been  applied  in  this  volume  in  connection  with  every  other 
moral  obligation?  What  more  is  required  than  that  both 
should  give  expression  to  mental  desires, — that  these  latter 

252 


EMPLOYERS  AND  EMPLOYEES  253 

should  never  be  allowed  to  be  outweighed  by  any  merely  bod- 
ily or  physical  considerations? 

The  need  of  following  this  course  will  become  apparent 
when  we  consider  the  history  of  the  relations,  as  gradually 
developed  in  periods  preceding  our  own,  between  employers 
and  employees.  Before  the  time  of  civilization — and  the 
same  is  true  in  our  own  time  wherever  there  is  little  or  none 
of  it — the  employer,  like  a  giant  with  pygmies  or  a  master 
with  slaves,  usually  compelled  his  helpers  to  carry  out  his 
orders  by  exerting  or  causing  to  be  exerted  the  most  strenu- 
ous kind  of  physical  force.  Even  as  late  as  when  the  Suez 
Canal  was  dug,  the  contractors,  with  the  sanction  and  help 
of  the  government,  would  arbitrarily  draft  gangs  of  men  and 
put  them  under  overseers  who  with  whips  would  drive  them 
miles  from  home,  make  them  work  from  dawn  to  dark  and 
keep  them  at  it  for  as  many  months  or  years  as  seemed 
necessary.  As  a  perfectly  natural  result  of  this  method, 
antagonism  arose,  and  has  always  been  continued  between 
employers  and  employees.  But,  because  there  was  once 
antagonism,  is  no  reason  for  continuing  it,  in  case  the  condi- 
tions have  been,  or  can  be,  changed.  What  is  it  that  can 
most  effectively  change  these?  What  but  a  change  in  the 
method  that  started  them?  This  method  was  the  treating 
of  human  beings  as  if  they  were  mere  brutes,  as  if  they  were 
possessed  of  only  a  physical  nature,  incapable  therefore  of 
being  influenced  by  any  appeal  except  to  it. 

In  order  to  change  the  conditions,  it  is  evident  that  the 
treatment  of  employees  should  begin  to  be  that  fitted  for 
men  possessed  of  minds.  Very  little  thought,  too,  will  re- 
veal why,  for  other  reasons,  this  should  be  the  case.  What 
is  it,  for  instance,  that,  in  order  to  obtain  the  best  results, 
the  successful  employer  most  needs  in  the  persons  whom  he 
employs  ?  It  is  not  mere  physical  force  such  as  he  could  ob- 
tain from  animals  or  machines.  This  might  give  him  help 
at  certain  times.  But  it  could  not  begin  to  give  him  the 
help  needed  at  other  times,  or  that  at  most  times  can  be 
afforded  by  those  capable  of  thinking,  feeling,  and  willing. 
The  wage  that  he  pays  would  obtain  for  him  little  service  of 
real  value,  if  it  did  not  include  what  could  be  contributed  by 
these;  and  the  proof  that  he  recognizes  this  to  be  a  fact  is 
shown  by  the  readiness  with  which  he  gives  the  largest  wages 
to  those  who  have  manifested  the  most  intelligence,  loyalty, 
eagerness,  and  persistence  in  carrying  out  his  instructions. 


254  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

On  the  other  hand,  the  employee  wants  and  needs  the  same 
characteristics  in  his  employers.  He  wishes  to  serve  men 
with  mental  natures, — not  embodiments  of  brute  force  who 
treat  him  with  no  more  consideration  than  if  he  were  a  mere 
spoke  in  the  wheel  of  a  big  unthinking  machine.  The  proof 
that  they  have  this  feeling  is  shown  by  the  way  in  which 
many  laborers  shirk  work  when  they  can,  go  on  a  strike,  as 
it  is  called,  when  they  dare,  and  spend  most  of  their  lives  in 
a  state  of  chronic  antagonism  to  those  by  whom  they  are 
employed.  It  is  contrary  to  reason  to  suppose  that  this  could 
be  the  case  to  such  an  extent  as  it  is,  were  the  latter,  in  every 
regard,  kind,  honest,  fair,  and  just.  In  the  circumstances, 
what  seems  to  be  most  needed,  therefore,  whether  we  con- 
sider the  employer  or  the  employee,  is  a  character  that  is 
rendered  moral  through  keeping  the  physical  in  all  cases 
subordinate  to  the  psychical,  not  allowing  bodily  con- 
siderations to  outweigh  those  that  are  mental. 

This  is  something  which  in  innumerable  cases,  in  almost 
all  ages  of  the  world,  certain  persons  have  scrupulously 
tried  to  do.  For  centuries,  preceding  our  modern  industrial 
period,  it  was  customary  for  a  young  man  to  enter  some  shop 
as  an  apprentice.  Here  his  relationship  to  the  manager  was 
often  as  satisfactory  as  that  of  an  adopted  son.  He  was 
kindly  treated  and  carefully  trained.  If  he  did  his  duty,  he 
could  look  forward  to  becoming  a  master  workman  or  even 
a  partner  in  the  business,  or  to  conducting  a  business  of  his 
own.  But  of  late  years  these  conditions  have  been  changed. 
The  small  shop  with  its  few  workmen,  living  together  almost 
as  one  family,  has  been  superseded  by  the  enormous  es- 
tablishment with  thousands  of  workmen.  It  is  impossible 
for  those  in  authority,  either  as  owners,  who  frequently  live 
at  a  distance,  or  as  managers,  to  know  personally  any  but  a 
very  few  of  the  operatives.  Frequently  there  are  absolutely 
no  channels  of  mental  communication  between  employers 
and  employees.  To  the  former,  the  latter  represent  merely 
so  much  bodily  force  that  can  be  applied  to  physical 
production.  Very  naturally  the  employees  who  recognize 
this  condition  do  not  like  it.  They  want  to  be  regarded 
and  treated  like  human  beings  who  have  a  mental  nature. 

It  follows  from  what  has  been  said  that  the  methods  of 
securing  the  right  relationships  between  employers  and 
employees  are  closely  connected,  indeed  fundamentally 
connected,  with  those  which  determine  moral  character. 


DEALINGS  WITH  LABORERS  255 

The  questions  involved  in  these  relationships  can  be  rightly- 
solved  so  far  alone  as  each  of  the  interested  parties  is  ac- 
tuated by  higher  mental,  non-selfish,  rational,  and  humane 
desire. 

Very  singularly,  however,  both  parties  usually  refrain 
from  emphasizing  this  fact.  The  officials  of  corporations 
that  have  done  the  most  to  provide  for  the  safety,  comfort, 
and  prosperity  of  their  operatives  are  usually  the  very  last 
to  attribute  their  action  to  higher  moral  motives.  As  a  rule, 
they  say  that  it  is  due  to  exercising  practical  common  sense 
in  their  efforts  to  secure  content  and  efficiency  among  their 
workmen.  On  the  other  hand,  the  leaders  of  the  operatives 
seldom  base  their  demands  for  improvements  upon  their 
wish  to  obtain  higher  moral  treatment.  They  usually  speak 
only  of  justice.  These  facts  are  due  to  traits  in  human  na- 
ture that  none  of  us  can  fail  to  admire.  They  show  how 
many  people  there  are  who  are  too  modest  to  boast  of  having 
higher  moral  ideals  than  have  their  fellows;  and  how  many 
feel  that  their  fellows  will  appreciate  action  that  is  repre- 
sented to  be  mainly  a  manifestation  of  the  underlying 
principles  of  common  sense  and  ordinary  justice. 

At  the  same  time  the  fact  that  the  non-selfish  and  hu- 
mane are  not  emphasized  is  apt  to  lead  both  employers  and 
employees  to  overlook  or  disregard  their  real  importance  in 
producing  the  general  result.  Both  classes  are  in  danger  of 
coming  to  think  that  they  are  dealing,  not  with  anything 
which,  in  origin,  is  traceable  to  higher  desire,  but  with 
demands  connected  almost  exclusively  with  lower  desire. 
What  other  effect  can  be  suggested  when  agitators  go  around, 
as  lately  one  prominent  man  has  done,  urging  that  labor  be 
put  "into  the  saddle,"  or,  as  another  iprominent  man  on  the 
opposite  side  has  done,  demanding  that  labor  be  put  "  into 
its  place "  ?  Such  conceptions  and  exhortations,  with  the 
actions  to  which  they  logically  tend  might  attain  a  physical 
result  but  could  not  possibly  attain  a  moral  result.  For 
the  latter,  the  world  needs  to  have  all  classes  together  put 
"into  the  harness,"  where  each  shall  "lend  a  hand"  and 
serve  rather  than  drive  his  neighbor.  When  that  which  is 
the  moral  problem  has  been  solved  in  this  way,  there  will  be 
little  trouble  with  laboring  men.  Otherwise,  they  might 
receive  the  largest  possible  minimum  wage  for  the  fewest 
possible  hours'  work  sufficient  to  keep  the  industry  going, 
and  still  be  discontented.     On  the  contrary,  if  treated  with 


256  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

kindness  and  courtesy,  they  might  accept,  with  cheerful- 
ness, as  do  many  of  our  household  servants,  as  low  wages 
for  as  many  hours'  work  as  would  be  necessary  to  enable 
their  employers  to  remain  in  the  employing  class.  There 
are  quite  a  number  of  industrial  centers  in  our  own  country 
whose  conditions  can  verify  this  statement.  But  in  them 
the  rich  have  never  forgotten  the  promptings  of  their  higher 
desires  sufficiently  to  become  ostentatious  and  snobbish, 
nor  the  poor  sufficiently  to  become  pretentious  and  fawning. 
The  employers  still  remember  that  many  of  themselves  once 
did  the  same  kind  of  work  as  is  now  done  by  the  least  im- 
portant of  their  employees;  and  in  school  and  church  and 
social  gathering  an  effort  is  put  forth  to  make  everyone  feel 
that  he  is  treated  with  such  kindness  and  courtesy  as  is  due 
to  his  mere  human  personality. 

It  must  be  confessed  that  these  conditions  do  not  exist 
in  many  places  in  our  country;  and,  undoubtedly,  in  fewer 
places  in  Europe.  But  they  might  exist  everywhere;  and 
in  only  the  degree  in  which  they  do  exist  can  all  the  social 
conditions  of  industry  become  wholly  satisfactory.  For 
instance,  attention  has  recently  been  called  to  the  demands 
of  the  Labor  party  of  England.  They  are  stated  to  be  (a) 
The  universal  enforcement  of  the  Minimum  Wage  Law;  (b) 
The  Democratic  Control  of  Industry,  i.  e.,  control  by  the 
operatives;  (c)  The  Revolution  in  National  Finance,  i.  e.y 
the  taxing  of  only  the  wealthy ;  (d)  The  Surplus  Wealth  for 
the  Common  Good,  i.  e.,  the  confiscation  of  the  possessions 
of  the  nobility. 

There  is  no  need  here  of  considering  these  demands  in 
detail,  though  the  effects  of  one  or  two  of  them  will  be 
mentioned  hereafter.  It  is  sufficient  to  notice  in  this  place 
that  only  one  of  the  demands  could  be  granted  without  in- 
volving action  which  those  against  whom  it  was  directed 
would  consider  unjust,  and  would  not  permit  unless  com- 
pelled to  do  so  through  the  use  of  threatened  or  applied 
force.  Moreover,  this  force  would  be  resisted.  It  would 
be  resisted  not  only  by  the  wealthy  and  aristocratic,  but 
by  others  who  would  say  that,  according  to  the  testimony 
of  history,  an  application  of  the  principle  underlying  such 
methods  of  disposing  of  property  would  imperil  the  ownings 
of  every  man  in  England  who  had  saved  enough  money  to 
have  possessions;  and,  in  fact,  would  imperil  the  whole 
structure    of  what  is  termed  civilization,  because  this  is 


INDUSTRIAL  LIBERTY  257 

founded  upon  the  individual's  right  to  possess  property,  and 
the  obligation  of  the  government  to  render  this  possession 
secure.  At  any  rate,  it  is  evident  that  the  character  of 
these  demands  and  the  methods  needed  in  order  to  get 
them  carried  out  would  augment  rather  than  lessen  the  ten- 
dency to  try  to  secure  and  to  continue  to  maintain  human 
betterment  through  the  agency  of  physical  force.  It  is 
true  that,  in  some  cases,  they  might  ultimately  lead  to 
desirable  Jesuits.  But  even  though  in  industrial  centers 
this  might  be  the  case,  the  remedy  would  be  too  narrow  in 
its  applications  to  apply  to  all  the  conditions  needing  at- 
tention, like  domestic  and  mercantile  conditions,  together 
with  the  results  of  laziness,  unthrift,  drunkenness,  vice,  and 
crime,  as,  for  instance,  in  East  London.  It  certainly  is 
true  that  reforms  brought  about  through  force  exerted  by 
a  single  class  in  the  community  for  the  purpose  of  subject- 
ing to  its  own  interests  the  interests  of  all  other  classes,  is 
not  the  right  way  in  which  to  promote  the  universal  preva- 
lence of  a  spirit  that  is  non-selfish,  rational,  and  humane. 

In  our  own  country  the  demands  of  labor,  while,  in  some 
directions  parallel  to  those  of  the  English  workers,  are  less 
revolutionary.  Among  native  Americans  they  usually  are 
associated  with  extending  the  democratic  principles  of  our 
government  into  what  is  termed  Industrial  Liberty.  Let 
us  examine,  for  a  little,  what  this  term  implies,  and  find  out, 
so  far  as  we  can,  its  relationship  to  the  general  moral  re- 
quirements of  which  we  have  been  speaking. 

Liberty  is  a  word  that  may  be  differently  interpreted. 
It  does  not  mean  the  same  to  one  person  or  set  of  persons 
that  it  does  to  another.  In  a  large  community  where  the 
wishes  of  one  man  are  often  opposed  to  those  of  his  neighbor, 
liberty,  if  all  are  to  have  it,  must  necessarily  involve  on  the 
part  of  almost  everyone  more  or  less  self-denial  and  com- 
promise. It  cannot  possibly  exist  among  people  all  of  whom 
are  determined  to  do  exactly  as  they  please.  Demo- 
cratic liberty  in  America  recognizes  this  fact.  Bolshevik 
democracy  in  Russia  does  not.  It  allows  anyone  to  be 
robbed  or  killed  who  does  not  agree  with  those  in  authority. 
This  insures  liberty  not  for  all  but  for  some,  and  these  soon 
lose  it.  Undoubtedly  some  labor  leaders  hold  a  concep- 
tion of  industrial  liberty  such  as  would  benefit  all;  but 
others  do  not ;  they  seem  to  think  that  nothing  can  give  even 
the  least  degree  of  liberty  except  a  condition  in  which  the 


258  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

operatives  shall  decide  by  vote  all  questions  not  only  con- 
cerning the  employment  and  dismissal  of  laborers,  but  of 
oversight  and  general  superintendence,  together  with  sub- 
jects having  to  do  with  every  phase  of  manufacturing,  trad- 
ing, or  ownership,  even  to  the  extent,  if  it  seem  advisable, 
of  confiscating  the  capital  and  distributing  it  among  the 
employees  according  to  the  principle  that  to  the  workmen 
belong  the  spoils,  which,  in  that  case,  they  certainly  would 
become.  Most  employers,  accepting  apparently  this  inter- 
pretation of  industrial  liberty,  very  naturally  oppose  it. 
They  remind  us  that  every  great  business  enterprise,  some- 
times when  first  started,  and  sometimes  later,  especially  in 
periods  of  business  depression,  comes  upon  seasons  when,  if 
continuing  to  employ  and  pay  its  laborers,  it  must  have 
money,  and  that  this  must  be  obtained  either  by  assessing 
its  stock  already  issued,  or  by  issuing  new  stock  or  bonds. 
In  either  case,  it  must  be  helped  by  capitalists.  These  are 
the  only  ones  who  can  afford  to  pay  more  on  what  they 
already  own,  or  to  buy  what  is  newly  offered.  It  is  not 
feasible,  they  say,  therefore,  to  try  to  get  along  without 
capitalists.  Sooner  or  later  they  will  be  needed.  We  are 
reminded,  too,  that  great  enterprises  cannot  be  conducted 
successfully  except  by  those  who  have  education,  and  ex- 
perience, and  have  the  right  to  select  and  appoint  as  their 
chief  helpers  others  who  have  similar  attainments,  and  that 
nothing  could  be  worse  for  the  employees  themselves  than 
the  absolute  collapse  of  the  industrial  situation  that  would 
follow  upon  the  success  of  some  of  the  measures  that  their 
class  have  advocated. 

But  for  this  reason  need  the  operatives  give  up  their 
desire  for  industrial  liberty?  Not  at  all.  All  they  need  is 
to  revise  their  wrong  conceptions  of  what  it  demands.  Nor 
need  they  lower  their  conceptions  of  liberty  in  general. 
Who  is  there  in  the  United  States,  Great  Britain,  or  France 
that  thinks  himself  deprived  of  political  liberty,  merely 
because  he  cannot  put  his  hands  into  the  national  treasury 
and  take  whatever  money  he  wishes,  or  cannot  have  a  di- 
rect voice  in  selecting  cabinet  officials  or  the  millions  of  ap- 
pointees of  these  or  of  their  subordinates  in  army,  navy,  or 
civil  life?  That  which  gives  to  the  individual  citizen  of  a 
democracy  a  consciousness  of  having  political  liberty  is  a 
condition  of  life  in  which,  so  far  as  possible,  a  man  is  given 
equality   of   opportunity   with   his  fellows.     Most   of  us 


INDUSTRIAL  LIBERTY  259 

Americans  think  of  opportunity  as  represented  in  our  free 
school  system ;  and  in  the  numberless  instances  in  which,  on 
account  of  it,  the  children  of  the  poorest  laborers  have  risen 
to  the  highest  positions.  They  recall  too  that  among  these 
are  very  many  who  have  worked  themselves  up  by  passing 
through  various  stages  of  employment  in  the  industrial 
world,  men  like  Andrew  Carnegie  who  began  as  a  telegraph 
messenger  boy,  or  Charles  M.  Schwab  who  was  once  a  spoke 
driver  receiving  a  dollar  a  day.  As  virtually  all  the  great 
manufacturing  and  transportation  corporations  of  the  coun- 
try are  headed,  in  part  at  least,  by  men  who  have  risen 
in  this  way  from  the  lowest  ranks,  people  in  general  are  in- 
clined to  argue  that,  even  in  present  circumstances,  em- 
ployees have  as  much  industrial  liberty  as  they  need. 

But  some  certainly  do  not  have  as  much  as  they  desire. 
It  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  all  of  them  cannot  become 
Carnegies  or  Schwabs,  and  a  large  part  of  the  mental  equip- 
ment that  differentiates  the  ordinary  workman  from  men  of 
this  character  is  an  inability  to  wait  patiently  for  a  future  in 
which  alone  his  desires  can  be  fulfilled.  What  he  wants  is 
to  have  them  fulfilled  in  the  present.  Of  course,  all  one's 
desires  are  never  fulfilled;  but  a  little  thought  ought  to 
convince  most  of  us  that  there  are  certain  conditions  fitted 
to  convey  at  least  a  partial  consciousness  of  industrial 
liberty  which  are  now  denied  to  the  majority  of  employees. 
Not  to  speak  at  present  of  a  natural  desire  to  have  a  sense  of 
possession,  in  connection  with  the  enterprise  toward  which 
their  services  are  contributing,  and  the  interest  that  might 
be  imparted  to  them  by  a  sense  of  having  a  share  in  its 
profits,  even  the  less  ambitious  would  like  to  feel,  for  in- 
stance, that  no  one  can  force  them  to  overwork  or  to  work 
against  their  own  wills,  or  in  a  way  for  which  they  are  not 
fitted,  or  without  receiving  a  fair  amount  of  pay  and  as 
much  as  another  is  receiving  for  the  same  work.  They 
would  like  to  feel  that,  when  employed,  they  will  not  be 
penalized  or  discharged  merely  because  of  personal  dislike  or 
false  accusations  of  laziness,  carelessness,  drunkenness,  or 
other  irregularities ;  that  fair  consideration  will  not  be  denied 
them  for  absences  due  to  illness  or  responsibility  for  others ; 
and  that  their  ability  will  not  fail  to  be  recognized  as  it 
should  be  because  of  the  jealous  machinations  of  some 
tyrannical  overseer.  There  are  innumerable  matters  of 
contention  between  employers  and  employees,  that  no  one 


260  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

likes  to  have  decided  against  himself  arbitrarily,  i.  e.,  with- 
out a  hearing.  Nor  is  he  satisfied  to  have  the  results  of  this 
hearing  decided  solely  by  the  one  who  has  seemed  to  have 
once  acted  unjustly.  It  is  when  this  is  done  that  he  feels 
that  he  is  treated  as  a  slave.  What  he  wants  therefore  he 
describes,  without  any  definite  notion  of  how  he  shall  obtain 
it,  as  industrial  liberty. 

Would  he  want  this,  or  feel  resentful  because  of  not  pos- 
sessing it,  if  matters  of  the  kind  that  have  been  mentioned 
could  be  submitted  to  the  review  of  a  council  representing 
his  fellow  workmen,  just  as  like  matters  of  dispute  in  a  free 
state  are  reviewed  by  a  jury  of  one's  peers?  Notice  that 
this  arrangement  would  accomplish  several  important  re- 
sults. It  would  cause  most  of  the  workmen,  because  so 
much  would  be  at  stake,  to  select  for  their  representatives 
with  the  employers  their  wisest  rather  than  their  wildest 
associates.  It  would  bring  together  representatives  of  both 
employers  and  employees  where  financial,  business,  econom- 
ic, and  social  conditions  could  be  explained  and  discussed  in 
a  manner  to  cause  a  better  mutual  understanding  of  them. 
It  would  put  an  end  to  strikes.  Where  everything  was 
explained  and  an  honest  endeavor  made  to  arrive  at  a  fair 
and  just  conclusion,  public  sentiment  among  the  operatives 
would  not  approve  of  physical  force.  Finally,  it  would 
insure  more  efficiency  both  in  work  and  workers.  This 
last  is  something  that  is  difficult  to  believe  unless  one  has 
learned  that  psychical  non-selfish  rationality  is  the  con- 
trolling influence  in  the  minds  of  the  majority  of  people. 
Very  many  employers  doubt  this.  They  seem  to  think 
that  to  allow  anything  like  liberty  to  laborers  would  be  as 
unwise  as  to  allow  it  to  soldiers;  that  it  would  entirely 
interfere  with  the  kind  of  discipline  that  alone  can  render 
concerted  work  successful.  But  suppose  that  the  soldiers 
are  as  much  interested  in  the  cause  of  the  warfare  and  the 
conduct  of  it  as  are  the  officers?  Will  there  not  be  disci- 
pline in  an  army  composed  of  such  soldiers?  Years  ago 
the  esprit  de  corps  among  college  students  rendered  it  im- 
possible for  the  professors  to  obtain  testimony  from  them 
with  reference  to  such  a  matter,  say,  as  cheating  in  exami- 
nations; and  it  was  supposed  that  college  sentiment  was  not 
opposed  to  it.  But  when  partial  charge  of  such  cases  was 
given  to  the  students  they  sometimes  proved  to  be  more 
alert  in  detecting  and  severe  in  punishing  the  delinquents 


PRIVATE  CONTRACTS  AND  PUBLIC  LAWS  26l 

than  the  faculty  had  been.  If  it  could  be  proved  that  an 
employee  deserved  to  have  himself  dismissed  or  his  wages 
diminished  for  laziness,  carelessness,  or  irregularity,  it  seems 
certain  that,  in  an  establishment  where  there  were  the  right 
mental  relations  between  employers  and  employees,  the 
decisions  of  both  would  usually  coincide.  Moreover,  the 
latter  themselves  would  be  the  last  to  imperil  the  continu- 
ance of  their  own  salaries  by  clamoring  for  any  changes  that 
might  render  less  well  equipped  with  the  results  of  capital, 
experience,  or  education  the  general  business  which  fur- 
nished them  with  employment.23 

23  Very  singularly,  on  the  day  in  which  the  author  was  correcting 
the  final  printed  proofs  of  this  volume,  two  articles  in  the  American 
Magazine  for  December,  1919,  arrested  his  attention.  One  was  en- 
titled A  Man  with  a  Great  Idea,  written  by  Mary  A.  Mullett,  and  the 
other  entitled  Here  is  My  Plan  by  John  Leitch.  These  articles  furnish 
a  remarkable  confirmation  of  the  truth  of  the  general  theory  unfolded 
in  the  preceding  pages — one  crudely  resembling  which,  by  the  way, 
was  suggested  in  a  tyceum  lecture  prepared  by  the  author  in  1877.  At 
that  time,  however,  it  seemed  hardly  possible  that,  within  forty  years, 
its  speculative  conceptions  would  be  fully  demonstrated  to  be  of 
practical  value.  Mr.  Leitch  during  the  last  five  or  six  years  has 
been  instrumental  in  introducing  among  some  two  hundred  thousand 
employees  his  system  of  Industrial  Democracy.  According  to  this 
system,  all  those  connected  with  an  industry  willing  to  agree  by  vote 
to  try  his  method  are  given  an  organized  government  with  a  House  of 
Representatives,  a  Senate,  and  a  Cabinet.  Members  of  the  House  are 
chosen  by  secret  ballot  cast  by  all  the  workmen,  and  represent  each 
department  of  the  industry,  the  number  of  representatives  being  de- 
termined by  the  number  in  the  department  and  in  the  whole  estab- 
lishment to  which  it  belongs.  In  a  small  factory,  for  instance,  one 
representative  might  be  elected  by  ten  voters,  and  in  a  large  factory  by 
a  hundred  voters.  Members  of  the  Senate  are  made  up  of  the  minor 
executives,  heads  of  departments,  and  foremen;  and  members  of  the 
Cabinet,  who  have  no  vote  in  legislation,  of  the  chief  executive  officers 
with  the  President  of  the  Corporation  as  Chairman.  All  enactments 
concerning  dismissals,  wages,  salaries,  hours  of  labor,  etc.,  are  con- 
sidered in  Committees  as  in  the  Congress  of  the  United  States,  and 
must  be  passed  by  both  houses.  So  far  as  Mr.  Leitch  knows,  no 
measure  passed  in  this  way  has  ever  been  vetoed  by  a  Cabinet.  Hours 
devoted  to  the  duties  of  legislation  are  counted  as  among  those  spent 
upon  labor,  and  any  money  saved  by  increase  of  efficiency  on  the  part 
of  departments  or  persons  is  distributed,  every  two  weeks,  as  a  divi- 
dend on  wages,  a  weaver,  for  instance,_ getting  for  a  perfect  product  a 
bonus  of  20  per  cent.;  for  a  product  with  one  defect  15  per  cent. ;  with 
two  defects  10  per  cent.,  etc.  The  records  of  increased  satisfaction  and 
efficiency  among  the  laborers  are  marvellous.  One  plant,  for  instance, 
increased  its  yearly  earnings  by  over  eighty  thousand  dollars.  Another 
lessened  its  yearly  expenditure  for  coal  in  1912  from  $8,967.12  to 
$6,231.97,  and  for  water  from  $309.91  to  $31.82. 


262  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

Another  thought  seems  to  be  needed  with  reference  to 
this  subject.  It  is  this,  that  in  order  to  carry  out  the  sug- 
gestions that  have  been  made,  it  is  only  infrequently  that 
governmental  or  political  action  is  needed.  All  that  is 
needed  is  a  contract  so  drawn  that  the  State  courts  can  en- 
force it, — a  contract  between  the  employers  and  each  of 
the  employees,  signing  by  himself  or  through  a  representa- 
tive. By  the  contract  the  signers  are  protected,  the  em- 
ployer from  such  things  as  irregularity  in  work  and  strikes 
imperiling  his  fulfiling  of  contracts,  and  the  employee  from 
such  things  as  dismissal  or  lessening  of  pay  without  just 
cause.  Both  parties  may  surrender  something  but  pre- 
serve much  more.  A  contract  in  such  a  case  is  preferable 
to  government  law  because  it  is  an  agreement  whereby  each 
party  to  the  contract  preserves  his  own  freedom  of  action 
except  so  far  as  he  himself  assigns  limits  to  it.  Government 
law  enforces  limits  without  obtaining  individual  consent. 
There  is  another  objection  to  settling  questions  of  this  sort 
through  political  action.  Politics  seldom  settles  them  in  the 
right  way.  It  determines  them  by  the  result  of  a  physical 
preponderance  of  votes,  not  a  psychical  overbalancing  of 
ideas.  A  demagogue  who  wants  votes  will  side  with 
a  hundred  thousand  operatives  rather  than  with  their  one 
employer ;  and  an  employer  will  coerce  a  hundred  thousand 
voters  rather  than  have  his  own  ability  to  exert  influence 
diminished.  Often  whichever  side  wins  will  obtain  the 
adoption  of  some  extreme  measure  that  will  do  about  equal 
harm  to  both  sides.  It  is  always  to  be  hoped  that  before 
such  a  subject  becomes  a  shuttlecock  for  partisan  politics 
great  business  corporations  of  commanding  influence  will 
see  and  seize  the  opportunity  to  adjust  the  questions  at 
stake  in  such  a  manner  as  to  set  examples  that  will  be  of  in- 
calculable benefit  both  to  the  parties  immediately  concerned 
and  to  the  whole  community.     (See  footnote  *a,  page  245.) 

In  addition  to  the  .method  just  mentioned,  in  connection 
with  it  or  without  it,  there  are  other  means  through  which 
an  employer  can  appeal  to  industrial  employees  in  such 
ways  as  to  cause  them  to  take  a  mental  interest  in  his  work. 
Sometimes  this  may  be  done  merely  through  expressing 
personal  sympathy  and  appreciation  for  those  who  work 
faithfully,  encouragement  for  those  who  have  difficulties,  and 
gratitude  to  those  who  overcome  them.  Sometimes  the  same 
may  be  done  through  an  exhibition,  not  of  private  but  of 


AMERICAN  VS.  EUROPEAN  WORKERS  263 

public  sympathy,  tending  to  benefit  the  employees  indirectly 
by  contributing  to  the  comfort  and  enjoyment  of  a  whole 
community  through  introducing  improvements  into  the 
methods  employed  in  connection  with  roadways,  parks,  gar- 
dens, homes,  schools,  churches,  and  places  of  entertainment. 
People  may  become  interested  in  an  employer's  success  on 
account  of  the  public  spirit  that  he  manifests  and  the  good 
that  he  does  with  what  he  gets.  But  more  satisfactory 
than  these  indirect  methods  of  enlisting  a  workman's  in- 
terest are  those  that  make  a  direct  practical  appeal  to  him 
by  rewarding  him  for  personal  efficiency.  Such  a  reward 
may  result  from  a  system  of  promotion  which  advances  the 
workmen  the  quantity  or  quality  of  whose  output  has 
been  particularly  commendable;  or  from  a  system  of  pay- 
ment not  for  the  mere  time  spent  in  labor,  but  for  the 
amount  and  value  of  that  which  each  one's  labor  has  pro- 
duced; or  the  reward  may  result  from  a  system  of  allowing 
all  or  certain  of  the  employees  to  purchase  by  their  labor, 
and  at  reduced  prices,  shares  of  stock  in  the  company  for 
which  they  work,  or,  at  the  end  of  each  successful  season,  to 
receive,  proportioned  according  to  the  amount  of  their 
salary,  a  bonus  now  and  then,  or,  invariably,  a  prescribed 
share  of  the  profits  of  the  company,  gradually  introducing 
more  and  more  of  them  into  the  position  of  stockholders. 
Lord  Leverhulme,  the  great  English  soap  manufacturer, 
says  that,  better  than  any  of  these  methods,  because  supply- 
ing more  nearly  what  the  most  of  the  laborers  want,  is 
giving  a  full  day's  pay  for  six  hours'  work,  and  thus  allowing 
them  to  get  some  real  enjoyment  out  of  life.  He  says,  too, 
that  this  can  be  done  by  manufacturers  in  a  way  that  will 
enable  them  to  make  more  money  than  probably  they  are 
making  at  present.  He  says  that  employing  two  gangs  of 
workmen  for  six  hours  each,  instead  of  one  gang  for  eight 
hours,  will  enable  owners,  with  the  same  plant  and  paying 
the  same  daily  interest  for  the  capital  invested,  to  increase 
very  greatly  their  factory's  output  (see  the  Metropolitan 
Magazine  for  July,  1919).  But  whatever  methods  may  be 
adopted,  the  reader  will  recognize  that  all  have  a  moral  in- 
fluence so  far  as,  by  complying  in  a  rational  and  humane  way 
with  the  wishes  and  needs  of  the  employee,  they  tend  to  de- 
velop and  increase  his  intelligence,  enthusiasm,  and  energy. 
A  corresponding  attitude  is  equally  important  on  the 
part  of  those  whom  the  manufacturer  employs.     Just  as 


264  E  THICS  AND  NAT  URAL  LA  W 

he  needs  to  receive  their  mental  interest  and,  if  wise,  takes 
measures  to  awaken  it,  so  they  need  to  give  him  the  service 
of  their  whole  being, — of  head  and  heart,  as  well  as  of  hands 
and  feet.  This  is  the  only  kind  of  service  that  distinguishes 
a  man  from  a  brute,  and,  therefore,  the  only  kind  worthy  of 
manhood.  One  who  fails  to  feel  that  he  should  give  it,  or 
fails  to  make  his  actions  accord  with  his  feelings,  is  a  piti- 
able and  negligible  factor  in  the  world  of  industry,  in  fact, 
in  any  relationship  in  which  he  comes  into  contact  with  life. 
Fifty  years  ago  an  American  could  almost  be  distinguished 
from  a  European  by  the  mere  fact  that,  while  the  former 
derived  his  pleasure  from  his  business,  the  latter  separated 
the  two.  The  American  enjoyed  his  work.  Morning, 
noon,  and  night,  whenever  one  met  him,  he  was  talking  and 
thinking  about  it,  and  evidently  relishing  it.  The  European, 
on  the  contrary,  seldom  spoke  of  it.  He  might  endure  it, 
but  what  he  enjoyed  was  his  recreation,  hrs  eating,  smoking, 
drinking,  fishing,  hunting,  golf,  cricket,  and  other  sports. 
There  are  arguments  that  can  be  urged  in  behalf  of  each  of 
these  attitudes  of  mind;  but  there  is  no  doubt  that  the 
American  attitude  at  that  time  was  best  fitted  to  develop 
individual  industry  and  enterprise;  nor  is  there  any  doubt 
that  the  increased  attention  given  in  recent  years  in  our 
country  to  recreation  has  tended  to  decrease  these  qualities. 
When  a  student  fitting  himself  to  become  an  orator,  for 
instance,  enjoyed  athletics  mainly  so  far  as  it  helped  pre- 
pare him  for  his  future  life  work,  he  put  so  much  thought 
into  the  exercise  of  voice  and  bearing  that  he  became  more 
or  less  of  an  artist.  Had  he  been  in  college  in  recent  years, 
his  exercise  would,  most  of  it,  have  ended  in  learning  to 
play  ball.  This  is  one  reason  why  our  country  has  no  such 
orators  to-day  as  it  had  when  every  thought  that  inspired 
the  souls  of  men  like  Webster,  Phillips,  Everett,  Beecher,  or 
Chapin,  took  form  that,  to  the  very  tip  of  tongue  or  finger, 
revealed  the  subordination  of  bodily  possibilities  to  mental 
purposes.  The  same  principle  applies  to  all  phases  of  em- 
ployment. We  usually  can,  and  if  possible  we  should  come 
to  enjoy  them,  and,  only  in  the  degree  in  which  we  can  do 
this,  can  our  lives  becomes  as  efficient  as  is  possible.  If  a 
man,  at  any  time  in  life,  find  himself  engaged  in  an  occupa- 
tion in  which,  after  giving  it  a  fair  trial,  he  cannot  take 
interest,  or  for  which  he  cannot  avoid  feeling  positive  dis- 
taste, he  ought  to  get  out  of  it. 


PROMOTION  AMONG  EMPLOYEES  265 

If  that  be  impossible,  he  would  be  justified  in  trying  to 
assume  an  interest  as  a  matter  of  policy  demanded  by 
the  necessity  of  self-preservation.  He  should  never  forget 
that,  no  matter  what  degree  of  industrial  liberty  he  may 
enjoy,  he  must  always  depend,  both  for  continued  employ- 
ment and  for  advancement,  upon  someone  above  him, — 
usually  upon  his  employer;  and  also  that  if  his  employer 
have  merely  common  sense,  he  will  not  imperil  the  welfare 
of  his  establishment  by  entrusting  either  its  lesser  or  its 
larger  interests  to  those  who  have  no  loyalty  to  its  purposes, 
or  enthusiasm  for  their  fulfillment.  In  this  world,  com- 
petition in  all  branches  of  work  is  too  keen  to  render  it  right 
to  allow  the  indifferent  or  the  slack  to  escape  observation  or 
penalty  for  their  remissness.  When  business  is  not  prosper- 
ous and  the  one  in  charge  of  it  must  lessen  the  number  of 
operatives,  it  is  not  right  for  him  to  drop  those  who  always 
seem  eager  to  begin  their  work  on  time,  and  sorry  if  they 
must  stop  it  before  it  has  been  completed.  When  he  is  seek- 
ing among  the  workmen  for  new  overseers,  it  is  not  right 
for  him  to  choose  those  who  keep  looking  at  the  clock  as  the 
noon  hour  approaches,  and  drop  their  tools  at  the  first  stroke. 
It  is  his  duty  to  choose  those  who  apparently  are  willing  to  be 
kept  busy ;  and  he  is  all  the  more  likely  to  choose  them,  if,  be- 
sides doing  their  own  work  thoroughly,  they  have  studied  the 
work  of  the  one  next  higher  than  themselves  in  rank,  and  fit- 
ted themselves  to  step  into  his  place  in  case  it  becomes  vacant. 

It  is  merely  adding  a  corollary  to  all  this  to  say  that  often 
the  very  worst  enemy  that  the  employee  can  have  is  the 
professional  labor  agitator, — especially  when  he  is  not  a 
fellow-workman  in  the  industry,  and,  therefore,  is  not  in 
sympathy  with  the  conditions  in  the  industry,  whose  work- 
men he  is  trying  to  influence.  Whatever  may  be  his 
avowed  purpose,  that  for  which  he  was  chosen  by  the  labor 
leaders  and  is  paid  for  out  of  funds  contributed  by  the 
workingmen,  is  to  awaken  discontent  in  the  minds  of  the  em- 
ployees, the  theory  being  that  this  discontent  will  lead  them 
to  undertake  measures  that  will  force  employers  to  grant  their 
own  laborers  concessions  that  will  benefit  all  laborers  as  a 
class.  Very  naturally,  with  this  object  in  view,  these  agita- 
tors never  represent  labor  as  a  blessing  to  a  man,  capable  of 
making  his  life  more  interesting  and  enjoyable,  but  almost 
invariably  as  a  curse  to  be  avoided;  and  the  employer  not 
as  a  helper  in  a  position  to  reward  fidelity  and  loyalty,  but 


266  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

as  an  enemy  to  be  resisted.  To  say  this,  is  not  to  oppose 
organization  among  the  laborers.  This  has  been  the  source 
of  many  improvements  in  industrial  relations.  But  one 
should  avoid  attributing  the  betterment  of  the  conditions  of 
labor  entirely  or  mainly  to  the  actual  or  threatened  use  of 
physical  force,  as  exemplified  sometimes,  but  fortunately  not 
always,  in  connection  with  what  is  termed  a  strike.  As  a  rule 
force  thus  used  embitters  the  employers  to  long,  stubborn, 
and,  in  the  end,  successful  resistence,  thereby  causing  much 
suffering,  throwing  thousands  out  of  employment  not  only 
temporarily  but  permanently,  and  exhausting  the  savings 
that  they  could  not  afford  to  lose.  Very  frequently,  too,  in 
case  the  strike  is  accompanied  by  violence,  those  who  have 
previously  been  prominent  among  the  workmen,  and  had 
reason  to  expect  promotion  from  the  employers,  have  lost 
their  chance  to  obtain  this,  and,  because  of  having  shown 
on  one  occasion  what  is  considered  disloyalty,  have  re- 
mained, ever  afterward,  objects  of  suspicion. 

Meantime  often,  all  that  the  strike  could  have  gained,  if 
it  had  been  successful,  could  have  been  accomplished  by  a 
direct  appeal  to  the  minds  of  the  employers,  or  an  indirect  ap- 
peal to  them,  addressed,  first,  to  public  sentiment.  A  strike 
may  be  the  means  of  appealing  to  the  latter.  But  when,  in- 
stead of  this,  it  is  merely  a  manifestation  of  trust  in  physical 
influence,  and  of  distrust  in  mental  influence,  it  is  usually 
injurious  both  to  the  cause  for  which  it  is  undertaken,  and 
to  the  persons  who  have  been  prominently  engaged  in  it. 
The  use  of  force,  as  applied  to  industrial  conditions,  may 
sometimes  be  justifiable,  for  the  same  reason  that  a  revolu- 
tion in  government  is  sometimes  justifiable, — as  an  excep- 
tional method  undertaken  in  view  of  an  exceptional  emer- 
gency. There  are  schoolboys,  as  we  all  know,  who  can  be 
made  to  do  right  without  resort  to  what  is  termed  corporal 
punishment.  But,  now  and  then,  one  of  them  needs  to  be 
whipped;  so  it  is  with  some  employers.  Even  then,  how- 
ever, it  is  rational  to  suppose,  and  always  rational  to  act 
upon  the  supposition,  that  a  thinking  and  feeling  being  like 
a  boy  or  a  man  has  always  within  him  somewhere,  though 
possibly  concealed  from  ourselves,  that  which  can  be  in- 
fluenced by  a  simple  desire  to  deal  with  him  frankly  and 
fairly;  and  that,  as  a  rule,  only  in  the  degree  in  which  this 
method  is  used  can  a  conclusion  be  reached  that  is  destined 
to  be  permanent  and,  in  all  regards,  beneficial. 


CHAPTER   XXI 

keeping  the  mind's  desires  uppermost  in  forms  of 
government:  autocracy  and  democracy 

Citizenship  Implies  a  Possession  of  Mentality — The  Individual  not 
usually  Responsible  for  the  Form  of  Government  by  which  he  is 
Ruled — Professional  Revolutiorists — When  Revolution  is  Justified 
— Political  Restlessness  of  the  Present  Age — All  Beneficial  Progress 
in  Government  Methods  has  Gradually  Subordinated  Physical  to 
Mental  Influence — Any  Form  of  Government  may  be  so  Admin- 
istered as  to  Further  the  Physical  rather  than  the  Mental — Different 
ways  of  Classifying  Forms  of  Government:  a  Monarchy  and  a 
Republic — Autocracy  and  Democracy — Democracy  in  Great  Brit- 
ain— The  United  States  is  a  Constitutional  and  Representative 
Democracy — Justice  and  Liberty  as  Secured  through  Constitutional 
Limitations — Through  Representative  Limitations — Danger  of  our 
Losing  Faith  in  these  Limitations — As  Applied  to  the  Constitutional 
System — As  Applied  to  the  Representative  System — Nominating 
Candidates  in  a  Primary  Election — Framing  and  Enacting  Laws 
by  Popular  Vote — Cure  for  Ills  of  Democracy  is  not  More  Democ- 
racy: Experience  of  Athens  and  Rome — The  Theory  of  the 
Divine  Right  of  Kings  Paralleled  by  that  of  the  Divine  Right  of  the 
Majority — Kings  and  Majorities  not  Infallible — Government  Right 
to  Limit  Suffrage — Object  of  Suffrage  is  to  Protect  the  Rights  of  the 
Individual  Citizen — These  Rights  sometimes  also  need  Protection 
from  Ignorant  Voters  who,  as  Voters,  are  also  Rulers — Methods 
of  Securing  this  Protection — These  Methods  as  Applied  to  Questions 
needing  Expert  Decision — Service  Suffrage — Suffrage  not  the  Best 
Corrective  for  all  Moral  Abuses — Failure  of  Unlimited  Manhood 
Suffrage  as  Applied  to  the  American  Emancipated  Slaves — Mental 
Reform  does  not  always  Need  Physical  Assistance — False  Methods 
of  Some  Reformers — History  of  the  Emancipation  of  the  American 
Slaves — Patronage  as  Related  to  Republican  Government. 

A  MAN  becomes  a  citizen  of  a  country  just  as  he  becomes 
a  child  of  a  family,  either  by  birth  or  by  adoption, 
which  latter,  as  applied  to  citizenship,  is  termed 
naturalization.  In  either  case  he  is  expected  to  accommo- 
date his  actions  to  the  laws  by  which  those  are  ruled  with 
whom  he  has  become  associated.     These  laws  constitute 

267 


268  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

a  part  of  the  environment  with  which  nature  has  surrounded 
him;  and  it  is  not  illogical  to  infer  that  it  may  be  a  great 
mistake  for  him  to  suppose  that  his  first  duty  is  to  make  war 
against  them.  It  is  more  natural,  rational,  and  humane  for 
him  to  infer  that  his  first  duty  is  to  accept  them,  and  to  try  to 
make  the  best  of  them,  and  thus  to  gain,  for  himself  as  well 
as  for  his  fellows,  the  kind  of  culture  which,  in  fulfillment  of 
the  methods  influencing  life  in  this  world,  they  seem  fitted 
to  impart.  It  is  because  of  a  failure  to  recognize  this  func- 
tion of  the  limitations  of  life,  that  many  political  and 
economic  reformers,  by  concentrating  all  their  attention 
and  effort  upon  endeavors  to  change  the  external  and 
material  conditions  of  society  in  general,  rather  than  the 
internal,  spiritual  conditions  of  individual  character,  often 
do  more  harm  than  good.  Notwithstanding  the  havoc 
wrought  in  the  stability  of  institutions  that  they  have  at- 
tacked, the  contentment  and  happiness  of  mankind  as  a 
whole  have  been  very  little  increased. 

Of  course,  if  a  man,  as  he  grows  to  maturity,  find  himself 
and  his  fellow  countrymen  enmeshed  in  methods  that  are 
irrational  and  promotive  of  evil  and,  therefore,  in  need  of 
reformation,  he  has  a  right — and  government  should  recog- 
nize it — to  express  his  opinion  of  them,  and  endeavor  to 
induce  others  to  agree  with  him.  Very  seldom,  however,  is 
it  one's  duty  to  go  beyond  this.  If  he  attempt  to  organize, 
or  to  induce  others  to  organize,  armed  resistance  for  the 
purpose  of  using  physical  force  against  the  officials  of  the 
government — even,  in  some  cases,  if  he  merely  refuse  to 
enlist  in  military  service  in  order  to  oppose  those  who  are 
resisting  these  officials,  he  may  become  guilty  of  treason. 
Because  he  is  a  member  of  a  community  organized  in  order 
to  do  what  the  people  as  a  whole  consider  necessary  to  insure 
their  safety,  prosperity,  and  happiness,  as  well  as  because  he 
is  an  individual  under  obligation  to  be  controlled  by  desires 
that  are  non-selfish  and  humane,  it  may  become  his  duty  to 
join  in  the  public  efforts  put  forth  for  the  purpose  of  secur- 
ing these  ends.  Even  though  he  may  not  wholly  approve 
of  the  particular  forms  or  methods  of  his  government's  ad- 
ministration, it  is  not  morally  incumbent  upon  him  to 
change  them  except  so  far  as  he  is  or  has  been  responsible 
for  them.  But  how  few  are  the  people  of  whom  this  can  be 
said  to  be  true;  how  few  have  had  anything  whatever  to  do 
with  selecting  or  framing  the  form  of  government  of  which 


REVOLUTIONISTS  269 

they  find  themselves  citizens!  They  were  born  under  its 
jurisdiction,  or  brought  under  it  by  the  compelling  force  of 
conquest,  or  by  the  necessity  of  earning  a  livelihood.  They 
need  have  no  conscientious  scruples,  therefore,  even  though 
they  may  be  subject  to  requirements  of  which,  theoretically, 
their  judgments,  reinforced  by  other  mental  tendencies 
within  them,  disapprove.  One  may  be  a  democrat  in  senti- 
ment living  under  an  autocracy,  or  an  aristocrat  living  under 
a  democracy,  but  this  is  no  reason  why  he  should  be  prompted 
to  active  hostility.  He  has  a  choice  to  make, — a  choice 
between  that  which  shall  conform  to  his  own  desires  or 
theories,  and  that  which  shall  conform  to  those  of  the  com- 
munity,— in  other  words,  between  the  desires  and  theories 
of  one  person  and  those  of  hundreds  and  thousands  of  others ; 
or,  to  put  it  stronger  than  this,  though  no  less  truthfully,  be- 
tween the  satisfaction  of  one  person's  private  wishes  and 
the  certain  disturbance  of  public  peace  and  order. 

Thus  presented,  it  should  not  be  difficult  for  a  rational 
mind  to  determine  which  of  the  two  alternatives  ought  to 
be  chosen ;  and  it  should  put  an  end,  at  once,  to  the  admira- 
tion which  many  people  not  only  express  but  have  in  their 
hearts  for  the  reckless  agitators  who,  apparently,  spend  all 
their  lives  in  such  efforts  as  cause  them  to  be  appropriately 
termed  revolutionists.  Some  of  these  men  are  undoubt- 
edly idealistic,  enthusiastic,  resolute,  courageous,  and  self- 
sacrificing,  and  for  such  qualities  deserve  one's  respect;  but, 
in  a  mind  really  admirable,  these  traits  need  to  be  balanced, 
as  they  are  not  in  them,  by  reasonableness,  good  judgment, 
and  kindly  consideration  for  the  safety  and  welfare  of  others. 
Revolutions  in  government,  as  was  said,  on  page  265  of 
strikes  in  industry,  are  justifiable  only  when  they  were  used 
as  exceptional  agencies  in  view  of  exceptional  emergencies. 
Only  when  the  administrative  conditions  under  which  one 
lives  are  clearly  chargeable  with  injustice  and  cruelty,  can 
the  real  interests  of  the  people  be  promoted  by  taking 
forcible  measures  to  secure  the  change. 

The  allusion  to  public  sentiment  in  this  phrase,  the 
appropriateness  of  which  most  people  will  recognize,  sug- 
gests the  relationship  of  every  revolution  when  it  is  justifiable 
to  predominating  mental  influence.  A  revolution  in  itself 
considered  is  a  result  of  the  physical  force  of  one  party  used 
to  overthrow  the  physical  force  of  another  party.  But  a 
revolution  is  never  entirely  successful  unless  the  minds  of 


270  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

the  majority,  at  least,  of  the  people  have  been  prepared  to 
desire  it.  A  sensible  reformer,  therefore,  will  always  recog- 
nize the  necessity,  not  only  among  his  own  followers  but 
among  the  whole  community,  of  educational  work  intended 
to  convince  people  in  general  of  the  wisdom  of  his  theories 
and  the  practicality  of  his  methods.  If  he  have  not  the 
ability  to  do  this  kind  of  work,  and  the  patience  to  wait 
until  it  has  accomplished  its  legitimate  results,  then  his 
starting  a  revolution  is  as  certain  to  end  in  failure  as  if  he 
were  a  traitor  intent  upon  betraying  the  cause  that  he  has 
been  professing  to  advocate.  Moreover,  if  he  do  have  this 
ability,  and  do  manifest  this  patience,  it  will  often  be  found 
that  there  is  no  need  of  resort  to  physical  force.  That  which 
otherwise  might  have  been  a  sanguinary  revolution  has 
become  merely  a  peaceful  change  in  external  conditions, 
which  practically  all  the  people  have  become  willing  to 
welcome. 

This  much  it  has  seemed  well  to  say  here  because  we  are 
living  in  an  age  of  great  political  restlessness, — an  age  in 
which  each  man  seems,  as  never  before,  perhaps,  in  the 
history  of  the  world,  to  feel  an  individual  responsibility  for 
the  political  conditions  surrounding  him.  What  has  been 
said  may  possibly  aid  in  ridding  the  reader  of  the  conception 
that,  in  anything  like  the  degree  in  which  he  supposes,  he 
is  responsible  for  these  conditions;  or  that,  if  he  were,  he 
could  do  as  much  toward  changing  them  through  exciting 
others  to  use  physical  force  as  by  trying  to  influence  them 
psychically. 

The  simple  and  the  important  fact  in  connection  with 
this  whole  subject — and  it  conforms  in  principle  to  the 
general  truth  that  has  been  brought  out  in  this  volume — is 
that,  according  to  the  testimony  of  all  history,  every  step 
indicative  of  progress  toward  justice  and  liberty  in  any  form 
of  government  is  due  to  the  results  of  processes  through 
which,  more  and  more,  bodily  and  physical  considerations 
have  been  prevented  from  outweighing  those  that  are 
mental  and  rational.  The  primitive  ruler,  whether  the 
father  of  a  family,  a  chief  of  a  tribe,  or  a  nobleman,  king,  or 
emperor,  needed  to  exercise  very  little  mentality.  This  was 
because  there  was  nothing  to  suggest  to  him  that  his 
authority  could  be,  or  would  be,  limited.  Without  con- 
sidering the  methods  or  results  of  his  action,  he  could  order 
his  subjects  to  do  what  he  chose.     He  was  not  obliged  to 


MENTAL  INFLUENCE  UPON  GOVERNMENT         271 

consult  with  others  or  to  discuss  any  undertaking.  He 
dominated  through  exerting  physical  force, — his  own  where 
he  ruled  a  few,  his  armies  where  he  ruled  many.  In  our 
time  the  agency  which  has  taken  the  place  of  unlimited 
authority  exerted  through  physical  force  is  mental.  The 
King  of  Great  Britain  and  the  nobility,  if  they  wish  to 
secure  legislation,  must  have  the  reasons  for  it  argued  in  the 
House  of  Commons,  and  appeal  made  in  this  way  to  the 
mental  desires  and  designs  of  its  members.  In  olden  times, 
as  in  Athens  and  Rome  when  most  nearly  approaching  the 
methods  of  modern  republicanism,  the  people,  in  acting 
together,  seem  seldom  to  have  recognized  any  limit  to  their 
authority.  They  did  as  they  chose  to  do;  and  they  did 
this  because  they,  too,  were  conscious  that  they  could  rule 
through  the  exertion  of  physical  force, — that  expressed 
through  the  action  of  the  greater  number.  In  our  country 
the  agency  which  has  limited  this  physical  power  of  the 
majority  is  also  mental.  Our  written  constitution  was  a 
result  of  reasoning  on  the  part  of  the  most  learned  and 
sagacious  minds  that,  at  the  time  when  it  was  formulated, 
our  country  contained;  and  the  methods  devised  by  them 
for  making  future  amendments  of  it  necessitate  delay  that 
involves  a  similar  exercise  of  thought  and  foresight  on  the 
part  of  our  present  legislators. 

Having  said  this  much,  the  reader  will  recognize  that  it  is 
logical  to  infer  that,  as  in  the  case  of  everything  in  this  world 
that  can  be  controlled  by  man,  and  therefore  predominantly 
influenced  either  physically  or  psychically,  all  governments 
of  every  possible  variety  can  be  so  administered  as  to  further 
either  the  right  or  the  wrong.  A  change  in  the  mere  political 
form,  therefore,  is  not — as  many  revolutionists  would  lead  us 
to  suppose — all  that  is  needed  in  order  to  redress  every  ad- 
ministrative grievance.  There  may  be  a  benevolent  despot- 
ism and  a  malevolent  democracy.  In  each  case,  that  which 
shall  benefit  or  harm  the  citizen  depends  mainly  upon  the  in- 
dividual characters  of  those  who,  in  official  or  other  positions, 
exercise  authority  over  his  possibilities.  As  a  general  prin- 
ciple, it  is  true  that  it  is  more  or  less  dangerous  to  allow  a 
single  man  to  have  absolute  and  unlimited  power.  Anyone  is 
apt  to  act  more  wisely,  as  well  as  more  humanely,  when  he  is 
obliged  by  law  to  confer  with  others  concerning  both  his  policy 
and  practice.  It  is  true,  too,  that  the  larger  the  number  of 
those  with  whom  he  confers,  or  with  whose  representatives  he 


272  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

confers,  the  more  likely  will  he  be  to  know  and  to  do  what  is 
for  the  interest  of  a  large  number;  and  that  the  more  nearly 
he  can  confer  with  representatives  of  all  the  people,  the  more 
nearly  will  his  decision  be  likely  to  secure  the  welfare  of  all. 
These  facts  furnish  strong  arguments  against  autocracy  and 
in  favor  of  democracy.  They  would  be  unanswerable,  were 
it  not  for  individuals  who,  whether  officials  or  not,  may  be 
dominated  under  any  form  of  government  by  personal — in 
the  sense  of  physical  or  self-seeking — considerations.  In  a 
democracy,  the  very  fact  that  no  one  man  has  absolute 
authority  increases  the  degree  of  authority  exercised  by 
everyone,  and  it  gives  everyone  more  or  less  opportunity  to 
exert  it.  This  opportunity  afforded  to  men  who  are  weak 
mentally  or  strong  physically — in  other  words,  devoid  of  well- 
informed  intelligence  and  breadth  of  sympathy,  or  else 
overflowing  with  craft  and  selfishness — a  chance  to  influence 
others  like  themselves  in  such  a  way  that,  first,  the  public 
sentiment,  and,  second,  the  political  action,  shall  be  devised 
and  determined  wrongly.  For  this  reason  the  influence  of 
the  demagogue  in  a  democracy  may  sometimes  prove  as 
detrimental  to  the  welfare  of  the  people  as  that  of  a  despot 
in  an  autocracy.  In  a  democracy,  the  people  constitute  the 
ruling  class,  and,  in  case  of  governmental  wrongdoing,  it  is 
the  people  who  need  to  be  resisted,  but  the  demagogue, 
seeking  mainly  an  election  to  office  by  them,  is  always  their 
advocate.  In  an  autocracy,  the  despot  and  his  repre- 
sentatives constitute  the  ruling  class ;  and,  in  case  of  govern- 
mental wrongdoing,  it  is  he  that  needs  to  be  resisted.  A 
hero  of  reform  in  a  democracy,  therefore,  may  oppose  the 
populace  for  the  same  reason  that,  in  a  despotism,  would 
cause  him  to  lead  it. 

Bearing  these  facts  in  mind,  let  us  notice  now  some  of  the 
methods  through  which  the  laws  and  regulations  of  govern- 
ment may  be  made  to  accord  with  the  promptings  on  the 
one  hand  of  physical  desire  and  on  the  other  hand  of  mental 
desire.  Governments  are  classed  in  different  ways.  They 
are  sometimes  distinguished  from  one  another  according 
to  the  origin  and  functions  of  their  chief  official.  When 
either  birth  or  election  gives  him  his  position  and  he  holds 
?t  for  life,  and  is  termed  as  the  case  may  be  a  king,  emperor, 
sultan,  or  mikado,  the  country  is  said  to  be  a  monarchy.  If 
the  position  be  temporary  and  elective  on  the  part  of  the 
people,  acting  either  individually  or  through  their  repre- 


GERMAN  AND  BRITISH  GOVERNMENTS  273 

sentatives,  then  whether  there  be  at  the  head  a  single 
official  termed  a  president,  or  a  collection  of  officials  termed 
a  council,  the  country  is  said  to  be  a  republic.24 

A  better  way  of  distinguishing  governments  is  that  which 
terms  some  of  them  autocracies  and  others  democracies. 
In  an  autocracy,  laws  are  framed  and  carried  out  according 
to  the  order  either  of  a  monarch,  governed  only  by  his  own 
opinions  and  will,  in  which  case  his  mode  of  government  is 
termed  a  despotism ;  or  of  a  group  of  people  who  constitute 
what  is  variously  described  as  an  aristocracy,  a  nobility, 
or  a  ruling  class,  in  which  case  the  government  is  termed  an 
oligarchy;  or  of  a  monarch  and  nobility  acting  together. 
This  latter  form,  for  which  there  is  no  special  name,  com- 
bines some  of  the  characteristics  of  both  forms  previously 
mentioned.  It  is  the  form  of  government  that  was  found 
until  very  recently  in  Germany,  Austria,  and  Turkey.  In  a 
democracy,  laws  are  framed  and  carried  out,  only  so  far  as 
they  are  sanctioned  by  the  people  acting  individually  or 
through  their  representatives.  It  makes  no  difference 
whether  the  chief  official  position  in  such  a  country  be  that 
of  an  emperor,  a  king,  a  premier,  a  president,  or  a  coun- 
cilor. If  these  have  no  authority  except  that  which  is 
delegated  to  them  by  the  people,  and  can  enact  no  law  except 
that  which  the  people  authorize,  the  governments  may 
usually  be  termed  democracies. 

On  first  thought,  the  former  government  of  Germany 
might  not  be  supposed  to  be  much  unlike  that  of  Great 
Britain.  Both  had  a  monarch,  and  an  upper  and  a  lower 
house  of  parliament.  But  in  many  important  matters,  as, 
for  instance,  in  the  making  of  treaties  with  foreign  nations, 
and  the  beginning  and  ending  of  wars,  the  Emperor  of 
Germany  made  the  final  decision;  and  with  reference  to 
other  matters,  the  lower  house  (the  Reichstag  or  Imperial 

2-»  According  to  the  Century  Dictionary,  a  republic  is  "a  government 
in  which  the  executive  power  is  vested  in  a  person  or  persons  chosen 
directly  or  indirectly  by  the  body  of  citizens  entitled  to  vote."  Refer- 
ring more  particularly  to  our  own  republic,  Harry  F.  Atwood,  in  Chapter 
II.,  of  his  Back  to  the  Republic,  says  that  it  "is  a  form  of  government  under 
a  constitution  which  provides  for  the  election  of  (1)  an  executive  and 

(2)  a  legislative  body  who,  working  together  in  a  representative  capacity, 
have  all  power  of  appointment,  all  power  of  legislation,  all  power  to 
raise  revenues  and  appropriate  expenditures,  and  are  required  to  create 

(3)  a  judiciary  to  pass  upon  the  justice  and  legality  of  their  governmental 
acts,  and  to  recognize  (3)  certain  inherent  individual  rights. 

18 


274  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

Diet) ,  elected  by  the  people,  had  no  effective  way  of  vetoing 
measures  desired  by  the  upper  house  (those  appointed  to  the 
Bundesrath  or  Federal  Council),  which  was  composed  largely 
of  representatives  of  the  nobility.  On  the  contrary,  in  Great 
Britain  the  consent  of  the  people  as  represented  in  the  lower 
house  must  be  behind  all  government  action.  This  govern- 
ment is  sometimes  called  a  limited  monarchy.  The  term  was 
originated  centuries  ago  when  there  was  danger  of  usurpation 
of  power  on  the  part  of  the  king.  At  present  there  is  no  such 
danger.  The  king  is  little  more  than  the  head  of  society.  As 
such,  however,  he  fulfills  an  important  function.  He  personi- 
fies the  dignity  and  dominance  of  the  state  as  an  organized 
instrumentality  securing  order  and  peace;  and  the  respect 
and  loyalty  conventionally  extended  to  him  express  and 
cultivate  among  the  people  respect  and  loyalty  for  the 
legal  methods  of  restraint  and  administration  that  he  re- 
presents. It  is  the  premier,  however,  who  is  at  the  head  of 
the  civil  and  military  power  of  the  country.  But  even  he, 
when  exercising  this  authority,  has,  in  his  country,  less 
influence  than  can  be  exercised  in  our  own  country  by  our 
President.  A  vote  in  the  lower  English  House  of  Commons 
against  the  premier's  policy  necessitates  his  resigning  and 
the  appointment,  by  the  king  of  another  premier.  In  this 
way,  at  any  time  the  representatives  of  the  people  can 
change  the  officials  of  the  administration.  They  were 
changed  during  the  late  war.  In  our  country — and  it  is  a 
condition  that  some  think  should  be  remedied — such  changes 
cannot  be  made  unless  the  President,  before  the  Senate 
acting  as  a  Court  of  Justice,  can  be  proved  to  have  violated 
some  law.  He  is  elected  for  four  years,  and  for  four  years 
he  must  continue  in  office.  In  this  regard,  therefore,  the 
administration  of  public  affairs  in  England  is  under  more 
direct  control  of  the  people  than  is  the  case  in  the  United 
States.  A  better  way  through  which  to  designate  Great 
Britain's  form  of  government  would  be  to  term  it  a  regal 
or  imperial  democracy,  or  a  constitutional  or  democratic 
kingdom  or  empire. 

The  United  States  is  also  a  democracy.  But  this  word 
alone  does  not  define  our  government.  It  is  a  constitu- 
tional and  representative  democracy.  In  a  pure  democracy, 
any  kind  of  a  law  may  be  drafted  by  anyone  and  enacted 
by  a  majority  vote  of  all  the  people.  In  our  constitutional 
democracy,  a  written  document  limits  the  subjects  concern- 


CONSTITUTIONAL  GOVERNMENT  275 

ing  which  laws  can  be  made,  so  as  to  prevent  them  from  in- 
terfering with  local  or  individual  rights;  and,  in  a  representa- 
tive democracy,  laws  are  drafted  and  enacted,  not  by  the 
people  as  a  whole,  but  by  legislators  whom,  in  an  orderly  and 
carefully  prescribed  way,  the  people  elect  to  act  for  them. 

The  reason  why  democracy  in  our  country  is  limited  by 
being  made  constitutional  and  representative  is  to  prevent 
the  exercise  of  tyranny.  If  it  were  not  for  these  limitations, 
it  would  be  impossible  to  deal  justly  with  all  of  as  many 
people  having  different  interests  as  are  found  among  us. 
Unless  all  had  a  voice  in  determining  taxes,  for  instance, 
those  sufficient  for  the  entire  country  might  be  levied  upon 
cotton  and  rice,  which  are  produced  only  in  the  south ;  or  up- 
on wheat  and  corn,  which  are  produced  largely  in  the  west; 
or  upon  manufactured  articles,  which  are  produced  largely 
in  the  east.  To  prevent  numerous  possibilities  of  wrongs 
like  these,  the  Constitution  prescribes  the  kinds  of  laws  that 
can  be  enacted  by  the  general  government  at  Washington 
and  the  kinds  that  must  be  left  to  the  local  governments  of 
the  different  States.  Still  more  important  than  the  guard- 
ing of  State  rights  is  the  influence  of  both  the  Federal  and 
State  constitutions  in  guarding  individual  rights.  Were  it 
not  for  our  constitutional  guarantees  of  personal  liberty, 
any  cruel  or  irascible  ruler,  any  conscienceless  or  popularity- 
seeking  demagogue,  leading  any  excitable  majority  of  a 
community,  could,  as  the  result  of  a  single  election,  deprive 
any  citizen,  merely  because  misunderstood  or  misrepre- 
sented, of  his  right  to  worship  as  he  wished,  to  educate  his 
family,  to  do  business,  to  own  property,  or  even  to  exist. 
There  are  many  places  in  our  country  to-day  where  such 
provisions  alone,  wTith  the  legal  redress  through  the  courts 
always  open  to  them,  enable  a  man  who  differs  from  his 
neighbors  by  being  a  Mormon,  a  Jew,  a  Negro,  a  Hindu,  a 
Chinaman,  or  any  one  of  a  score  of  possible  things,  to  live 
in  safety  and  comfort.  "  California,"  said  an  exultant  poli- 
tician of  that  State  referring  in  the  presence  of  the  author 
to  a  successful  agitation  to  secure  the  recall  by  popular  vote 
of  judges  and  judicial  decisions,  ''is  now  about  as  nearly  a 
pure  democracy  as  we  can  make  it."  "Yes,"  was  the  an- 
swer, "and  so  Athens  and  Rome  gradually  became,  and,  as 
a  logical  result,  Socrates  in  the  one  and  Jesus  Christ  in  the 
other  were  put  to  death  without  a  fair  trial." 

A  parallel  influence  in  the  direction  of  protecting  local 


276  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

and  personal  rights  was  intended  to  be  exerted  through  the 
limitation  of  democracy  in  our  country  by  means  of  the 
provision  that  it  should  be  representative.  The  methods  of 
pure  democracy  may  be  feasible  in  a  small  community ;  but 
they  are  not  so  in  a  large  one.  In  this,  no  one  citizen,  to 
say  nothing  of  all  the  citizens  acting  together,  can  find  time 
in  which  to  consider  and  deal  justly  with  every  one  of  the 
thousands  and,  as  one  might  say,  tens  of  thousands  of 
measures  presented  for  approval  or  disapproval.  If,  in 
such  a  community,  everyone  attempt  to  act  for  himself 
instead  of  through  a  representative,  a  few,  followed  by  fac- 
tions that  support  them,  will  try  to  enforce  their  own  opin- 
ions and  purposes  upon  other  individuals  and  factions. 
Force  thus  used  will  necessarily  result  in  civil  strife  and 
anarchy,  as  in  bolshevism;  and,  if  this  be  continued,  it  can 
be  ended  only  by  dictatorship  and  the  ignoring  of  any 
universal  principles  or  applications  of  justice. 

In  view  of  these  facts,  it  is  no  wonder  that  many  of  our 
most  thoughtful  citizens  feel  that  any  effort  tending  to 
wean  the  faith  of  our  people  away  from  constitutional  and 
representative  government,  and  to  turn  it  toward  pure 
democracy,  ought  to  be  vigorously  resisted.  Nothing,  as 
these  citizens  think,  is  needed  more  in  our  times  than  a 
recognition  that  loyalty  to  our  country's  written  constitu- 
tion, and  to  the  methods  of  amending  it  that  it  pre- 
scribes, is  as  important  as  loyalty  to  our  country's  flag. 
They  think  that  it  is  even  more  important,  because  the  flag 
could  continue  to  represent  the  country,  even  though  this 
were  to  become  degenerate  and  tyrannical ;  but  the  Consti- 
tution could  not  so  continue.  They  deem  one  among  us 
who  denounces  this  deserving  of  no  better  treatment  than  is 
visited  upon  those  under  a  monarchy  who  denounce  the 
king;  and,  in  case  he  be  a  foreigner  to  our  country,  they 
deem  him  deserving  of  no  less  severe  punishment  than  ban- 
ishment from  it.  By  his  own  action,  in  proving  treacherous 
to  that  which  is  the  main  source  of  our  national  prosperity 
in  which  he  has  sought  to  share,  he  has,  in  their  opinion, 
exhibited  a  character  exactly  symbolized  by  that  of  the 
snake  in  the  old  fable  that  stung  its  benefactor  who  had 
sought  to  revive  its  failing  life  by  placing  it  in  his  own  bosom. 

Unfortunately,  however,  it  is  not  alone  those  who  are 
foreigners  who  have  failed  to  appreciate  that  which  they 
owe  to  our  form  of  government.     Of  late  years,  in  some 


DISLOYALTY  TO  OUR  CONSTITUTIONAL  SYSTEM     277 

States,  owing  to  what  is  actual — though  usually  uncon- 
scious— disloyalty,  to  our  nation,  arrangements  have  been 
made,  whereby  a  single  whim-led  vote  of  legislature 
and  people  can  alter  any  constitutional  provision  of  the 
State,  or  any  decree  of  a  judge  interpreting  it,  or  remove 
him  from  office  in  case  he  fails  to  give  a  decision  in  accord- 
ance with  their  wishes.  As  applied  to  theory,  this  means  the 
adoption  of  a  conception  that  right  and  wrong  may  be  deter- 
mined by  the  State  as  represented  in  the  result  reached  by  any 
vote  of  a  majority,  a  theory  differing  little  from  that  of  the 
Germans  except  in  matters  of  detail.  As  applied  to  the  exer- 
cise of  rationality,  it  deprives  the  individual  of  the  delay  which 
would  give  himself  and  other  people  time  for  reflection  with 
reference  to  questions  at  stake ;  and,  as  applied  to  practice, 
it  could  not  legally' prevent,  in  times  of  excitement,  individ- 
ual rights  and  liberties  from  being  left  to  the  mercy  of  a  mob. 
Almost  equally  deserving  of  condemnation  are  the 
methods  that  have  been  adopted  in  some  States  with  the 
design  of  making  our  institutions  more  democratic  in 
the  sense  of  less  representative.  Think  of  what  has  resulted 
from  the  nomination  of  candidates  for  public  office  by  pri- 
mary elections  rather  than  by  representative  conventions! 
Owing  to  defects  in  the  management  of  these  latter,  which 
might  have  been  remedied  by  laws  regulating  the  selection 
of  delegates  to  them,  it  has  been  rendered  almost  impossible 
for  a  modest  man,  unwilling  to  go  about  telling  people  why 
he  is  personally  superior  to  someone  else  in  his  own  party, 
to  become  even  a  candidate  for  public  office.  He  becomes 
such  not  because  men  supposed  to  be  intelligent  and  to  have 
the  confidence  of  the  community  meet  together  publicly, 
and,  after  considering  and  debating  his  qualifications  and 
those  of  his  rivals,  give  their  reasons  for  his  nomination,  at 
the  same  time  stating  their  own  and  his  political  aims.  He 
is  selected  by  himself,  or  by  a  small  irresponsible  coterie, 
many  of  them  bribed  by  his  purse,  or  his  promise  of  future 
political  advancement ;  and  all  of  them  together  men  whose 
political  aims  cannot  be  definitely  ascertained.  Through 
secret  methods,  this  coterie  can  usually  induce  several  others 
to  enter  into  contest  with  their  candidate  at  the  primary 
nominating  election,  and  thus  divide  the  opposition  to  him 
into  so  many  separate  factions  that  no  one  of  them  can  de- 
feat him.  After  the  candidate  has  been  selected,  often  by  a 
small  minority  of  a  political  party  including  some,  too,  who 


278  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

are  not  members  of  it,25  the  laws  of  some  States  render  it 
impossible  for  members  of  the  same  party  to  nominate  and 
vote  for  another  candidate,  as  they  could  in  the  olden 
times.  The  result  is  that,  as  in  California  in  the  last  seven 
years,  at  important  elections  involving  the  choice  of  Legis- 
lators, congressmen,  senators,  governors,  and  presidents, 
many  hundreds  of  thousands  of  voters  have  been  virtually 
disfranchised.  In  1912,  there  was  no  feasible  way  in  which 
a  resident  of  that  State  could  vote  to  return  Mr.  Taft  to  the 
presidency.  This  was  because  the  names  of  the  "regular" 
as  distinguished  from  the  "progressive "  Republican  electors 
were  not  printed  on  the  official  ballots.  In  19 18,  no  one 
could  vote  for  any  man  who  had  been  a  candidate  at  the 
Democratic  primary  for  the  nomination  for  governor.  This 
was  because  the  man  nominated  at  the  primary  by  that 
party  had  received  certain  votes  also  for  the  Republican 
nomination,  and,  therefore  was  considered  as  a  Republican 
nominee,  and  yet  no  Democratic  candidate  had  received  as 
many  Democratic  votes  as  he. 

Such  results,  clearly  interfering  with  individual  liberty  of 
action,  are  evidently  caused  by  unwise  laws;  and  one  reason 
why  they  are  unwise  is  because  they  have  been  drafted  by 
people  ignorant  of  legal  requirements,  and  then  submitted 
to  the  electorate  as  a  result  of  petition,  and  put  on  the 
statute  book  by  a  majority  vote.  Why  is  not  this  method 
of  making  laws  just  as  irrational  as  would  be  that  of  a  man 
making  a  will  or  a  deed  conveying  property,  and  yet  failing 
to  consult  one  acquainted  with  the  requirements  rendering 
such  conveyances  legal  ?  As  a  fact,  only  those  who  under- 
stand legislation,  an4  who  are  given  opportunities  to  con- 
sult with  others  who  understand  it,  are  situated  so  that 
they  can  even  be  expected  to  draft  laws  wisely.     This  is 

2s  "  The  Michigan  primaries  are  of  the  'open '  variety.  That  is,  there 
is  no  party  enrollment,  nothing  to  prevent  a  Republican  from  voting  for 
a  Democratic  candidate,  or  vice  versa.  Nor  is  there  anything  to  pre- 
vent any  candidates  from  entering  the  primaries  of  all  the  parties.  A 
candidate  who  has  been  successful  in  the  primaries  of  more  than  one 
party  must  pick  out  the  party  whose  candidate  he  desires  to  become  in 
the  general  election.  Under  the  Michigan  law  his  name  cannot  appear 
on  more  than  one  ticket.  It  is  taken  for  granted  that  Mr.  Ford,  should 
he  win  in  the  primaries,  would  elect  to  become  the  candidate  of  the 
Democratic  party.  But  in  that  event,  the  damage,  so  far  as  the  Re- 
publicans are  concerned,  would  already  have  been  done,  as  they  would 
be  left  without  a  candidate  of  their  own." — New  York  Times,  June  21, 
1918. 


WEAKENING  OUR  REPRESENTATIVE  SYSTEM      279 

why  most  of  us  think  that  laws  should  be  drafted  in  legisla- 
tures. Of  course,  some  of  the  legislators  may  be  dishonest, 
and  for  this  reason,  undeserving  of  confidence;  but  the  very 
best  possible  place  in  which  to  find  out  their  real  character 
is  in  the  comparatively  small  community  which  they  are 
elected  to  represent.  The  greatest  objection,  however,  to  an 
unrepresentative  and,  therefore,  purely  democratic  method 
of  enacting  laws  is  that  few  feel  individually  responsible 
for  the  phrasing  of  them  or  even  for  the  enacting  of  them. 
In  Los  Angeles,  there  were  once  in  less  than  two  weeks 
three  different  election  days  for  votes  upon  laws  and  constitu- 
tional changes.  At  one  election,  a  pamphlel  describing  the 
measures  submitted  for  approval  could  not  be  intelligently 
read  through  in  less  than  a  whole  day.  Because  of  such 
conditions,  the  whole  number  voting  was  always  com- 
paratively small.  At  one  time,  in  that  city,  containing 
about  two  hundred  thousand  registered  voters,  less  than 
seven  thousand  went  to  the  polls  in  order  to  decide  upon 
the  expenditure  of  six  million  dollars;  and  this  in  a  place 
where,  before  the  war,  taxes  had  already  been  doubled 
within  three  years!  In  circumstances  like  these,  it  is 
obvious  that  a  very  small  but  well  organized  minority  could 
enact,  especially  by  exercising  a  little  deceit,  almost  any 
measure  no  matter  how  unwise  or  iniquitous.  "Eternal 
vigilance,"  said  the  Irish  orator,  John  Philpot  Curran, 
"is  the  price  of  liberty."  There  is  no  doubt  whatever  that 
carelessness  about  preventing  the  removal  of  provisions 
that  secure  liberty  can  end  in  nothing  but  its  destruction.26 

26  "What  do  you  think  of  presenting  a  ballot  to  the  voter  containing 
the  names  of  334  candidates  or  a  ballot  over  six  feet  long  covered  with 
printed  matter  upon  which  a  vote  is  to  be  cast  within  two  minutes  of 
time?  What  do  you  think  of  having  128  boards  and  commissions  in  a 
single  State,  in  addition  to  an  executive,  two  legislative  bodies,  and  seven 
other  elective  officials?  What  do  you  think  of  more  than  doubling  the 
expenses  of  government  in  nearly  every  State  in  the  Union  during  the 
decade  from  1903  to  1912?  What  do  you  think  of  spending  over 
$2,000,000  of  the  taxpayers'  money  on  primaries  and  elections  in  Cook 
County,  111.,  in  the  single  year  of  19 16,  aside  from  the  personal  expenses 
of  the  horde  of  candidates?  What  do  you  think  of  our  enacting  over 
62,000  new  statutes  in  this  country  during  the  five-year  period  from 
1909  to  1913,  inclusive,  and  of  our  having  over  65,000  decisions  of  courts 
of  last  resort  during  these  same  five  years,  and  compiling  631  large 
volumes  of  decisions?  These  are  only  a  few  of  the  many  questions  that 
might  be  asked  because  we  have  drifted  away  from  the  plan  of  a  repub- 
lic?"— Back  to  the  Republic,  by  Harry  F.  Atwood,  Chapter  I. 


280  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

Those  of  us  who  once  thought  that,  in  our  own  times,  another 
catastrophe  like  that  of  the  Dark  Ages  could  never  again 
overthrow  the  existing  civilization,  have  had  reason  lately 
to  be  disabused  of  that  conception.  May  we  all  be  pre- 
served from  practical  experiences  serving  to  prove  that  our 
forebodings  with  reference  to  the  possibility  of  a  return  of 
such  a  disaster  have  been  well  founded ! 

The  line  of  thought  that  has  just  been  pursued  will  sug- 
gest that  the  one  who  argues,  as  some  do  in  our  day,  that 
the  cure  for  the  ills  of  democracy  is  more  democracy,  is  not 
always  giving  wise  advice.  This  fact  was  demonstrated, 
too,  more  than  two  thousand  years  ago.  In  both  Athens 
and  Rome  the  people  applied  this  remedy,  and  the  more 
democracy  they  got,  the  more  they  realized  that  all  were 
exposed  to  sufferings  from  injustice,  and  the  better  were 
they  all  prepared  to  welcome  imperialism.  In  applying 
remedies  that  shall  bring  about  what  is  termed  progress, 
one  ought  always  to  bear  in  mind  that  this  is  not  indicated 
by  mere  movement.  Movement  may  take  place  on  the  line 
of  a  circumference  that  carries  the  world  back  to  former 
conditions  which  it  was  supposed  to  have  left  behind. 

Almost  every  one,  who  thinks,  knows  that  one  reason  why 
so  many  despotisms  have  led  to  revolutions  by  which  they 
have  been  destroyed,  is  because  so  many  of  the  officials  of 
despotism  have  conceived  that  the  cure  for  the  evils  of  au- 
tocracy is  more  autocracy.  Almost  everyone  knows,  too, 
that  the  lack  of  mentality  that  has  occasioned  such  a  con- 
ception is  usually  associated  with  a  belief  in  what  is  termed 
"the  divine  right  of  Kings,"  in  other  words,  a  belief  that 
the  family  to  which  the  ruler  belongs  holds  the  right  to  reign 
by  appointment  of  an  overruling  Providence,  and  that, 
for  this  reason,  his  personality  is  more  or  less  sacred,  and 
obedience  to  him  is  a  religious  duty.  Strange  as  it  may 
appear,  at  first,  a  very  similar  belief  comes  to  be  held  in  a 
democracy  with  reference  to  the  divine  right,  not  of  the 
monarch,  but  of  the  majority.  There  are  countless  numbers 
who  seem  to  believe  that  this  majority,  voting  on  any  given 
subject  at  any  given  time,  represents  the  voice  of  God,  and 
decides,  then  and  there,  the  right  or  the  wrong.  Prob- 
ably very  many  who  seem  to  hold  views  of  this  kind  would 
admit,  when  in  a  reflective  mood  and  closely  questioned, 
that  the  monarch  or  the  majority  may  occasionally  make  a 
mistake.     Nevertheless,  in  their  heart  of  hearts,  they  feel 


MAJORITIES  NOT  ALWA  YS  RIGHT  28l 

that  they  ought  not  to  concede  this;  that  it  ought  not  to  be 
true.  They  want  to  think  that  the  head  and  source  of  the 
authority  which  claims  their  allegiance,  and  is  the  inspira- 
tion of  their  loyalty,  is  exalted  in  kind  above  that  of  any- 
thing else  in  the  world.  At  the  risk,  however,  of  shocking 
the  sensibility  of  people  who  hold  to  such  a  belief,  there  is 
nothing  to  be  done  except  to  ascribe  it  to  a  stupid  lack  of 
mentality,  controlled  by  the  influence  of  crass  superstition. 

In  the  opinion  of  every  intelligent  historian,  too  many 
monarchs  have  done  wrong,  too  many  majorities  have 
voted  wrong,  too  many  nations  have  done  right  when 
they  have  dethroned  their  monarchs,  and  too  many  com- 
munities have  done  right  when  they  have  confuted  and 
finally  outvoted  the  decisions  of  majorities,  to  render 
rationally  acceptable  any  theories  with  reference  to  govern- 
ment that  emphasize  divine  rights  through  ignoring  in- 
dividual rights.  All  moral  action  in  this  world  is  a  result 
or  development  of  a  moral  decision  in  conscience;  and 
conscience  does  not  exist  except  in  the  individual.  If  this 
be  so,  there  must  always  be  some  tendency  to  wrong  in  any 
theory  or  practice  that  can  succeed  in  suppressing  the 
influence  of  the  individual  merely  because  the  one  who 
would  exert  it  happens  to  be  a  member  of  a  physical  minor- 
ity. Of  course,  we  all  have  to  acknowledge  that  the  origin 
of  the  theory,  as  applied  even  to  the  vote  of  the  majority,  is 
not  wholly  lacking  in  that  which  is  commendable.  It  seems 
due  primarily  to  a  feeling  of  loyalty  to  a  conception  funda- 
mental to  our  method  of  government, — a  conception  ex- 
pressed, years  ago,  by  the  author  himself : 

Where,  oh  where  shall  trust  in  truth  that  speaks  through  manhood  great 

and  small 
Overcome  the  few's  oppressing  by  entrusting  power  to  all? 

A  Life  of  Song:  Watching,  XXI. 

but  a  sincere  acceptance  of  the  rule  of  the  majority  is  per- 
fectly consistent,  as  is  also  an  acceptance  of  that  of  a  mon- 
arch, with  a  recognition  of  the  necessity  of  limiting,  in  some 
cases,  the  extent  of  the  authority  thus  exercised. 

We  have  considered  so  far  the  limitations  prescribed  for 
our  democratic  government  through  the  provisions  that  make 
it  constitutional  and  representative.  A  few  words,  per- 
haps, ought  to  be  added  here  with  reference  to  the  limita- 


282  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

tions  that  have  been,  or  might  be,  prescribed  with  reference 
to  exercising  the  right  of  suffrage.  To  begin  with,  it  seems 
important  to  notice  that  all  governments  that  permit 
suffrage  invariably  prescribe  regulations  more  or  less  re- 
stricting it.  It  is  not  granted  anywhere,  probably,  to 
minors,  idiots,  insane  people,  or  all  classes  of  immigrants. 
This  limiting  is  done  as  a  result,  in  strict  accordance  with 
the  theory  of  this  book,  of  subordinating  that  which  is 
merely  physical  in  a  man  to  that  which  is  mental ;  and  it  in- 
volves a  practically  universal  recognition  of  a  government's 
right  to  do  this.  Indeed,  any  suggestion  of  doubting  this 
right  is  coupled  logically  with  other  conceptions  so  absurd 
that  they  can  do  no  harm  because  they  can  find  so  few 
adherents.  Only  a  superstitious  belief  in  the  divine  guid- 
ance of  the  vote  of  the  majority,  analogous  to  the  belief  of 
the  peasantry  of  some  parts  of  Europe  in  the  divine  inspira- 
tion of  idiots,  could  lead  to  a  serious  argument  such  as  the 
author  once  read  in  a  newspaper  report  of  a  lecture  delivered 
before  a  Woman's  Club.  The  lecturer  argued  in  favor  of 
committing  the  destiny  of  the  nation  to  the  votes,  among 
others,  of  children,  if  old  enough  to  attend  school.  This 
conclusion  followed  an  argument  in  favor  of  allowing  all 
women  to  vote,  on  the  ground  that  it  would  educate  them 
to  a  knowledge  of  politics.  "Are  not  children,"  it  was 
asked,  "in  still  more  need  of  such  education?"  This  is  an 
example  of  what  sometimes  follows  when  a  secondary  reason 
for  a  course  of  action  is  made  to  take  the  place  of  a  primary 
reason. 

The  primary  reason  in  favor  of  allowing  people  to  vote  is 
that  doing  so  enables  them  to  protect  their  own  personal 
interests.  This  furnishes  a  strong  argument, — an  argument 
so  irrefutable  that  few  people  in  our  country  fail  to  accept, 
or  to  desire  to  carry  into  practice,  all  that  it  implies.  They 
believe  that,  so  far  as  feasible,  all  should  have  a  right  to 
vote,  and  that  the  State  should  impart  free  education  for 
the  purpose  of  fitting  them  to  vote  intelligently.  But  this 
belief  need  not,  and  ought  not,  to  prevent  them  from  recog- 
nizing that  there  is  another  side  to  the  question.  In  this 
country,  the  voters,  either  directly  or  indirectly,  through 
their  representatives,  make  the  laws.  The  voters  of  the 
country,  therefore,  are  really  its  rulers.  Suppose  that  a 
physical  majority  of  a  mass  of  people,  irrespective  of  any 
knowledge  or  experience  that  they  may  possess  in  connec- 


LIMITATION  OF  SUFFRAGE  283 

tion  with  a  subject,  are  allowed  to  dictate  government  action 
with  reference  to  it, — can  this  be  said  to  be  a  result  of  trying 
to  prevent  the  physical  from  outweighing  the  mental? 
Why  should  one  exert  a  ruling  influence  upon  a  community 
before  he  knows  how  to  speak  or  read  its  language,  and  thus 
to  find  out  its  needs  and  the  reasons  for  them  ?  Why  should 
any  foreigner,  however  intelligent,  be  permitted  to  vote 
before  he  has  lived  a  sufficient  time  in  our  country  to  under- 
stand its  methods  and  policies  and  their  purposes?  It 
would  not  interfere  with  his  personal  rights — it  might  afford 
him  additional  protection — could  many  legislative  questions 
be  submitted  to  the  decisions  of  those  alone  who  have  had 
opportunity  to  become  informed  with  reference  to  the  sub- 
jects with  which  they  deal. 

It  is  owing  to  considerations  of  this  kind  that  many  have 
argued  that  the  right  to  vote  should  be  limited,  as  it  was  in 
many  States  in  the  early  years  of  our  Republic,  to  those 
who  can  pass  a  test  of  intelligence  intentionally  made  so 
low  that  all  who  sincerely  desire  to  attain  to  it  can  easily 
do  this.  The  tests  usually  suggested  are  the  ability  to  read 
the  English  language,  or,  in  place  of  this,  the  ability  to  earn 
enough  money  to  support  one's  self.  Both  methods,  as 
will  be  noticed,  are  suggested,  though  probably  uncon- 
sciously, by  a  desire  to  prevent  the  physical  qualifications  for 
suffrage  from  outweighing  altogether  those  that  are  mental. 
A  method  that  would,  possibly,  be  more  effective  and  at 
the  same  time  more  satisfactory  to  a  larger  number  of 
people  might  follow  upon  an  adaptation  of  the  arrangements 
already  adopted  in  our  country  of  having  two  legislative 
houses.  Why  might  not  the  qualification  for  members  of 
the  lower  house  and  for  those  electing  these  members  be  as 
it  is  to-day, — the  possession  of  a  human  body  irrespective 
of  any  test  applicable  to  anything  more  than  the  most 
ordinary  mentality;  and  the  qualification  for  those  who,  in 
addition  to  this,  may  become  members  or  elect  members 
of  the  upper  house  be  higher?  Why,  for  instance,  might 
not  one's  tax-assessment  qualify  him?  Is  it  too  much  to 
say  that,  in  the  last  century,  in  our  own  country,  represen- 
tatives of  an  actual  property  owner,  as  distinguished  from 
a  non-owner,  if  they  alone  had  been  made  members  of  one 
of  the  two  legislative  bodies  controlling  our  large  cities, 
might  have  almost  entirely  prevented  much  of  the  extrava- 
gance and  dishonesty  which  has  characterized  expenditures 


284  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

in  these  cities?  Besides  owners,  others  also  might  be 
made  eligible  for  members  or  for  electors  of  members  of 
this  upper  house.  Why  might  it  not  be  feasible  to  introduce, 
for  their  benefit,  what  could  be  termed  service  suffrage, — 
suffrage  virtually  possible  for  all,  but  never  granted  except 
in  recognition  of  some  form  of  expression  of  public  spirit  and 
patriotism, — never  granted  except  to  one  able  to  present 
a  certificate  showing  that  he  has  fitted  himself  for  this 
function  by  having  performed  some  service  for  the  state, 
— perhaps,  by  attending  school,  perhaps  by  enlisting  with 
the  Boy  Scouts,  or  in  the  militia,  or,  perhaps,  by  doing 
other  like  work  ?  Through  such  arrangements,  certain  rights 
of  suffrage  would  come  to  be  regarded  as  attributable  not, 
like  a  man's  beard,  to  passive  physical  growth,  but  to 
active  mental  development.  It  would  be  recognized  as  a 
reward  for  achievement,  and  would  be  welcomed  by  the 
appreciation  that  it  deserves. 

It  would  seem  as  if  the  desirability  of  limiting  the  exer- 
cise of  suffrage  in  some  such  ways  would  be  recognized  by 
all.  The  world  is  full  of  people  who  are  ignorant  or  selfish. 
The  ignorant  are  capable  of  making  laws  that  are  against 
their  own  interests,  though  they  do  not  realize  that  this  is 
so;  and  the  selfish  are  prone  to  make  laws  that  are  against 
the  interests  of  others.  It  would  be  better  for  the  ignorant, 
and  better  for  the  neighbors,  at  least,  of  the  selfish,  to  have 
the  laws  made  in  connection  with  some  organized  influence 
of  the  intelligent  and  unselfish.  Of  course,  such  an  arrange- 
ment would  not  always  be  feasible.  It  would  be  difficult  to 
determine  definitely  exactly  who  were  intelligent  and  un- 
selfish. But  it  would  be  feasible  to  do  something  in  this 
direction.  It  would  furnish  the  best  way  of  promoting 
individual  welfare  for  the  same  reason  that  the  interests  of 
each  of  the  members  of  a  family  of  young  people  are  best 
preserved  when  all  have,  as  an  associate  and  adviser,  a  wise 
and  kindly  guardian. 

In  this  connection,  one  cannot  avoid  commending  our 
country's  business  men  for  their  recent  establishment  of  a 
non-political  association  organized  to  collect  and  distribute 
information  gathered  by  those  whose  experience  has  made 
them  most  familiar  with  our  country's  commercial,  in- 
dustrial, and  economic  conditions  and  needs.  Few  doubt 
that  this  association  will  afford  the  experts  whom  it  is 
now  usual  for  each  political  party  to  consult  in  connection 


NATIONAL  HOUSE  OF  BUSINESS  285 

with  new  measures  more  authority  than  in  the  past  to 
meet  together,  and  to  discuss  and  formulate  their  views. 
Thus  has  private  initiative  and  enterprise  finally  given 
embodiment  to  the  conception  of  Pelatiah  Webster  who,  in 
his  Dissertation  on  the  Constitution,  issued  in  1783,  proposed 
that  there  should  be  a  National  Chamber  of  Commerce,  or 
House  of  Business. 

In  connection  with  the  unwarranted  authority  which 
many  people  attribute  to  the  opinions  expressed  through 
the  vote  of  the  majority,  there  are  two  conceptions  so  at 
variance  with  the  principle  of  not  allowing  the  mental  to  be 
outweighed  by  the  physical,  that  they  seem  to  need  special 
mention.  The  first  conception  is  that  suffrage  gives  a  man, 
because  reinforced  by  others  who  vote  with  him,  physical 
power;  and  if  he  be  intent  upon  using  his  power  for  the 
purpose  of  doing  good  to  others,  gives  him  an  opportunity 
for  lessening  the  ignorance,  indolence,  drunkenness,  gam- 
bling, and  vice  of  the  world.  To  a  certain  extent  this  is  un- 
doubtedly true.  Nevertheless,  it  seems  important  to  say 
that  the  opportunity  thus  afforded  for  doing  good  is  not  as 
great,  nor  the  good  to  be  done  as  high  in  quality,  as  is  often 
supposed ;  and  that  there  are  certain  circumstances  in  which 
the  supposition  that  such  is  not  the  case  may  do  harm.  As 
related  to  effects  upon  character,  neither  the  possession  of 
the  franchise,  nor  the  law  which  its  possession  enables  one 
to  assist  in  enacting,  is  an  end  in  itself,  but  merely  a  means 
to  an  end.  The  enactment  and  execution  of  the  law  have 
to  do  with  an  outward  deed  alone.  They  never  can  reach 
the  source  of  moral  action  nor  secure,  for  an  individual  sub- 
ject to  the  law,  mental  control  over  his  own  physical  in- 
clinations. The  man  who  thinks  otherwise  is  making  a 
fatal  mistake, — fatal  because  it  is  the  very  thing  to  prevent 
h,im  from  pursuing  the  only  course  fitted  to  accomplish  that 
which  he  wishes.  Nothing  has  ever  so  demoralized  a 
civilized  community  as  the  conception  common  to  many 
parts  of  our  own  country  that  laws  prescribing  physical 
punishment  for  certain  practices,  can  take  the  place  of 
kindly  and  persistent  watchfulness,  instruction^  precept, 
argument,  and  example  exercised  everywhere  toward  all  in 
every  relation  possible  to  family,  school,  society,  business, 
church,  or  state.27    Of  course,  laws  at  times  exert  a  certain 

2 7  Notwithstanding  the  commendable  efforts  of  sincere  reformers  to 
put  an  end,  by  legal  enactments,  to  the  sale  of  liquor  in  one  State  and  to 


286  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

beneficial  effect;  but  in  such  cases,  as  has  been  already 
pointed  out  in  this  volume,  their  chief  moral  influence  is  in 
calling  attention  to  the  evils  against  which  a  law  is  directed, 
and  in  this  way  causing  men  to  think  about  them.  It  is, 
therefore,  very  unfortunate  not  to  recognize  that  the  primal 
duty  of  a  human  being  begins  with  that  which  can  be  done 
by  himself  personally  to  benefit  the  individual  at  his  side. 
This  world  would  be  governed  very  unjustly,  if  some  of  us 
could  not  fulfill  our  missions  without  becoming  voters  or 
legislators;  or  if  any  of  us  could  fulfill  them  entirely  by 
becoming  such.  What  all  of  us  need  most  is  to  realize  this 
fact,  and,  first  of  all,  in  our  homes  and  places  of  business. 
If  we  did  this,  our  families  and  associates  would  not  need 
to  be  restrained  by  law;  and  many  laws  which,  for  other 
reasons,  are  of  doubtful  expediency,  would  not  be  brought 
into  existence.  It  is  about  three  hundred  years  now  since 
intelligent  people  began  to  learn  that  men  cannot  be  made 
genuinely  religious  merely  by  drafting  and  executing  civil  or 
military  laws  penalizing  those  whose  external  conduct  as 
manifested  in  words  or  deeds  seems  to  be  in  need  of  reform. 
But,  even  down  to  our  own  time,  many  appear  oblivious 
of  the  fact  that  an  analogous  method  adopted  for  the  pur- 
pose of  making  men  genuinely  moral  is  certain  to  prove 
equally  futile.  Training  for  morality  as  well  as  for  religion 
must  be  imparted  in  the  home  or  the  church ;  and  no  possible 
influence  exerted  by  the  school  or  the  state  can  ever  be  suc- 
cessfully substituted  for  either  of  them. 

This  seems  to  be  a  conception  that  is  difficult  to  get  into 
the  minds  of  those  who  have  been  trained  to  think  that 
suffrage  is  a  panacea  for  well-nigh  all  the  evils  to  which 


sights  supposedly  banished  with  the  red  light  district,  in  another,  notice 
the  following  testimony  with  reference  to  the  lack  of  complete  success: 
"Railroad  and  express  records  introduced  by  the  prosecution  showed 
that  in  a  period  of  146  days,  beginning  January  1st,  more  than  212  tons  of 
intoxicating  liquors  had  been  received  at  Bangor,  county  seat  of  Penob- 
scot County  (Maine),  without  seizure  or  complaint  by  the  sheriff." — 
Philadelphia  Public  Ledger,  June  13,  1918.  "If  the  undraped  truth  has 
no  horrors  for  your  unsophisticated  eyes,  drop  into  the  .  .  .  this  week. 
...  On  the  outside  the  manager  is  exhibiting  a  photographic  enlarge- 
ment of  one  of  the  scenes  in  the  film  which  is  warranted  to  make  almost 
every  male  passer-by  hesitate  and  stare.  .  .  .  On  the  inside,  Manager 
...  is  featuring  .  .  .  posings  in  the  nude  ...  Of  course  the  evil  or 
impure-minded  are  sure  to  talk  a  lot,  but  the  true  lover  of  that  which  is 
artistic  can  only  admire." — Los  Angeles  .  .  .  .  ,  in  1916. 


SUFFRAGE  AND  FORMER  SLAVES  287 

society  is  prone.  Undoubtedly  it  can  lessen  some  of  them. 
But  even  then  it  is  not  suffrage  that  does  this;  it  is  the  use 
to  which  suffrage  as  a  means  has  been  put.  Even  used  as  a 
means,  it  is  frequently  no  more  effective  than  would  be  some 
other  means.  As  a  rule,  those  who  possess  suffrage  have  to 
labor  as  assiduously  to  obtain  the  legislation  that  they  wish, 
as  would  be  the  case  did  they  not  possess  suffrage.  It  was 
supposed,  after  the  Civil  War  in  our  country,  that  the 
granting  of  the  right  to  vote  to  the  former  slaves  would 
secure  them  all  other  civil  rights,  and  in  certain  States  it  has 
been  supposed  that  the  granting  of  it  to  women  would  lead 
to  the  prohibition  of  certain  forms  of  indulgence  to  which 
they  are  not  so  prone  as  are  men;  but  it  has  been  found  that, 
in  order  to  attain  these  ends,  those  to  whom  suffrage  has 
been  granted  require  the  aid  of  almost  as  much  public  can- 
vassing and  private  lobbying  with  legislators  as  was  needed 
before  it  was  granted.  Very  often,  probably,  half  the  en- 
ergy and  money  expended  in  securing  suffrage  might  have 
secured  directly  that  which  suffrage  gave  merely  a  promise 
of  securing  indirectly.  In  many  cases,  too,  this  promise 
has  never  been  fulfilled.  It  was  not  fulfilled  as  a  result  of 
granting  manhood  suffrage  to  the  former  slaves  of  the 
South.  It  would  have  been  far  better  to  have  granted 
suffrage  to  them  as  a  reward  to  be  won  by  education  and 
industry,  and  then  to  have  afforded  them  special  aid  in  these 
activities.  This  would  have  prevented  the  physical  from 
outweighing  the  mental;  and  the  thoroughly  rational  and 
just  spirit  manifested  in  doing  this  would  probably  have 
prevented  also  that  feeling  of  resentment  which,  for  more 
than  fifty  years,  has  not  only  caused  the  former  slave- 
holder to  continue  by  subterfuge  to  keep  his  former  slaves 
practically  disfranchised,  but  has  also  kept  himself  in  the 
same  condition,  whenever  to  vote  for  what  would  otherwise 
be  of  benefit  to  him  has  involved  his  voting  also  with  the 
political  party  that  once  tried  to  force  himself  and  his  kind 
into  practical  subjection  to  a  majority  necessarily  lacking 
the  education  and  experience  which  alone  could  have 
rendered  such  an  arrangement  sensible  and  safe. 

This  thought  suggests  in  connection  with  the  subject  of 
suffrage  the  second  conception  which  on  page  285  was  said 
to  be  at  variance  with  the  principle  of  not  allowing  the 
physical  to  outweigh  the  mental.  This  conception  does 
not,  like  the  one  just  discussed,  consider  the  enacting  or 


288  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

physical  executing  of  law  to  be  a  substitute  for  exerting 
mental  influence:  but  to  be  something  that  must  always 
accompany  whatever  mental  influence  is  exerted.  After 
the  Civil  War  in  our  country,  mental  considerations  would 
have  admitted  to  citizenship,  upon  taking  an  oath  of  alle- 
giance, those  who  had  been  in  rebellion,  and,  in  addition  to 
this,  in  order  to  emphasize  the  abolition  of  slavery,  have 
admitted  to  suffrage  former  slaves  whenever  they  became 
sufficiently  intelligent  and  thrifty.  This  having  been  done, 
rationality,  common  sense,  and  good  judgment  among  the 
people  would  probably,  in  a  little  time,  have  reconciled 
them  to  the  conditions.  As  it  was,  a  committee,  headed 
by  Carl  Schurz,  a  man  of  unchallenged  integrity,  reported 
that  slavery,  though  abolished  by  law,  was  being  virtually 
reestablished  in  the  South  by  a  system  of  peonage  brought 
about  as  a  penalty  for  debt.  This  result,  which  seemed 
clearly  an  endeavor  to  restore  conditions  in  which  physi- 
cal force  should  continue  to  determine  industrial  relations, 
seemed  to  justify  counteraction  through  exertion  of  the 
same  kind  of  force.  Through  votes  representing  the  physi- 
cal majority  of  the  whole  country  they  decided  to  en- 
franchise the  former  slaves.  Through  this  course  it  was 
thought  that,  in  certain  States  at  least,  the  blacks  could 
outvote  the  whites  sufficiently  to  prevent  anything  like  a 
recurrence  to  conditions  of  slavery.  At  the  same  time  the 
Northerners  knew  that,  as  a  class,  the  negroes  were  at  that 
time  too  ignorant  and  inexperienced  to  use  the  ballot  wisely; 
and,  however  difficult  it  might  have  been  to  find  a  more 
thoughtful  and  considerate  method  of  accomplishing  their 
purpose,  which  in  itself  was  justifiable,  they  should  not  have 
done  what  they  did.  They  made  the  mistake  of  supposing 
that  they  could  correct  one  wrong  by  committing  another 
wrong;  and  never  since  the  beginning  of  time  have  two  wrongs 
made  a  right. 

Unfortunately,  the  spirit  that  animated  these  Northern 
politicians  at  that  time  is  apt  to  be  manifested  over  and 
over  again  by  so-called  reformers,  and  even  by  sincere  ones, 
whenever  there  seems  to  be  a  chance  of  obtaining  a  victory 
for  their  own  cause  through  influence  that  can  be  exerted 
through  the  physical  force  of  superior  numbers.  Much  of 
the  campaigning  even  for  the  most  praiseworthy  objects  is 
of  this  character.  The  worst  feature  of  the  case,  too,  is  the 
fact  that  apparently  sensible  people  justify  such  methods. 


EM  A  NCIPA  TION  289 

They  think  that  they  are  doing  particularly  right  when 
they  join  not  only  in  the  marching  and  shouting,  but  in  the 
mobbing  of  those  who  differ  from  them  in  opinion,  and  in 
the  smashing  of  their  property.  Think  of  the  methods 
adopted  by  certain  prohibitionists  of  Kansas  and  suffra- 
gettes of  London!  In  the  long  run,  however,  a  resort  to 
physical  influence  is  in  danger  of  being  followed  by  con- 
sequences in  which  the  evil  overbalances  the  good. 

The  same  fact,  indeed,  could  be  illustrated  not  only  by 
the  attempt  to  enfranchise  universally  the  former  slaves  of 
our  own  country,  but  by  the  whole  history  of  their  emanci- 
pation. At  the  time  of  the  adoption  of  the  Constitution, 
a  few  slaves,  at  least,  were  held  in  every  State  of  the  Union 
with  the  exception  of  New  Hampshire.  But  partly  because 
the  system  of  slavery  was  thought  wrong,  and  partly  be- 
cause, in  the  North,  it  was  found  to  be  unprofitable,  it  was 
gradually  prohibited  by  law  in  all  but  the  Southern  States. 
Even  there,  however,  it  was  widely  opposed.  George 
Washington  of  Virginia  and  many  others  freed  the 
slaves  whom  they  had  inherited;  and  Henry  Clay  of  Ken- 
tucky, the  most  popular  statesman  of  that  section,  advo- 
cated for  years  a  bill  in  Congress  emancipating  all  slaves  by 
purchasing  them  from  their  owners.  If  those  interested  in 
the  subject  had  aimed  chiefly  to  influence  thought,  and  had 
exercised  patience,  and  waited  a  decade  or  so  longer  for 
mental  influence  to  produce  its  legitimate  effects,  the  war 
that  followed  would  probably  never  have  occurred.  This 
was  clearly  a  result  of  forcing  the  issue.  Had  it  not  been 
for  the  methods  adopted  and  the  bitter  feeling  excited  by 
the  sectional  abuse  attendant  upon  them,  there  might  have 
been  a  reasonable  compromise  that  would  have  benefited 
and  satisfied  both  of  the  opposing  factions.  As  it  was, 
the  resort  to  physical  force  brought  about  a  satisfactory 
physical  result,  but  fifty  years  have  gone  by  since  then, 
and  it  has  not  yet  brought  about  a  satisfactory  mental 
result. 

The  connection  between  the  influence  exerted  by  the  vote 
of  the  majority  and  that  which  is  physical  rather  than  men- 
tal is  nowhere  more  evident  than  in  the  extensive  use  in  all 
republics  of  that  which  is  termed  patronage.  Considered 
theoretically,  laws  in  a  republic  represent  mental  desire. 
This  is  the  reason — and  a  worthy  one — why  many  have  a 
conscientious  belief  in  the  rightfulness  of  this  form  of  govern- 


290  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

ment.  They  argue  that  the  measures  adopted  by  it  are 
traceable  not  to  physical  force  but  to  the  thinking  of  all  the 
people,  the  opinion  of  each  of  whom  is  solicited  in  his  vote, 
and,  after  being  compared  and  combined  with  the  opinions 
of  others,  is  embodied  in  the  general  result.  Practically, 
however,  it  often  happens  that  laws  do  not  represent  the 
opinions  of  the  people.  They  represent  the  opinions  of  a 
few  self-seeking  partisans.  This  is  because  some  executive 
with  the  power  of  appointment  puts  in  lucrative  positions 
certain  legislators  or  their  friends  who  also  have  a  power  of 
appointment  and,  in  their  turn,  put  hundreds  and  perhaps 
thousands  into  lucrative  positions,  many  of  which  involve 
expenditure  of  money  not  easily  traceable  when  expended 
merely  for  the  spenders'  benefit.  These  appointees  and 
their  friends,  scattered  all  over  the  community,  are  able  to 
exert  so  much  influence  upon  the  individual  voter  that  few 
candidates  for  office  who  oppose  them  can  be  elected.  It  is 
possible,  therefore,  for  an  executive  to  use  his  power  of 
appointment  in  such  a  way  as  to  intimidate  a  sufficient 
number  of  legislators  to  force  them  to  vote  for  what  he 
wishes.  They  fear  that  if  they  do  not,  they  will  be  defeated 
the  next  time  that  the  people  are  asked  to  vote  for  them.  An 
executive  who  thus  forces  a  legislative  body  to  do  his  will, 
usually  begins  by  appointing  to  office  unfit  or  dishonest 
men,  and  continues  by  not  vetoing  unfit  or  dishonest  legis- 
lation. In  some  cases,  the  expenditures  of  the  government, 
before  the  majority  of  the  people  have  divined  the  reason, 
have  been  multiplied  three  or  four  times,  and  chiefly  to  fill 
the  pockets  of  appointees  of  this  kind,  in  the  expectation 
that  they  will  control  the  popular  vote  and  thus  forward  the 
executive's  ambition.  Even  when  he  himself  has  not  fur- 
thered the  interests  of  those  whom  he  knows  to  be  dis- 
honest, he  has,  too  often,  furthered  the  interests  of  his 
political  party  at  the  expense  of  his  country.  The  men- 
tality, the  unselfish  thinking  of  the  people,  has  not  been 
allowed  free  expression  and  sovereignty.  It  has  been  sup- 
pressed by  physical  force  that  has  given  mastery  to  the 
selfish  schemes  of  partisan  politicians.  Nevertheless,  many 
governors  and  even  presidents  of  our  country,  for  the  very 
reason  that  they  have  ruled  in  this  way,  have  been  called 
strong  men,  and  have  been  supposed  to  be  worthy  of  honor. 
The  time  is  coming  when  they  will  more  likely  be  thought 
to  have  made  themselves  fit  for  a  chain  gang,  and  to  be  en- 


POLITICAL  PATRONAGE  291 

titled  to  less  consideration  even  than  some  in  this  class;  for 
they  will  be  recognized  to  have  been  no  better  than  traitors 
to  the  principle  that  is  most  fundamental  to  the  success  of 
the  government  of  which  they  have  had  charge. 


CHAPTER  XXII 

KEEPING   THE  MIND'S  DESIRES    UPPERMOST    IN  THE  FRAMING 
AND  ADMINISTERING  OF  GOVERNMENT  LAWS 

Laws  Promote  Morality  when  they  Prevent  Individuals  from  Interfer- 
ing with  Others'  Mental  or  Rational  Development — Liberty  as 
Applied  to  Religion — To  Education — To  Social  and  Political 
Position — To  Business  Conditions  and  Surroundings — Tendency 
toward  Government  Interference  as  Illustrated  from  Experience  of 
Railways — Results  of  Government  Oversight  and  Ownership — 
Reliance  upon  Physical  not  Rational  Influence — Arbitration,  and 
Methods  of  Evading  its  Intended  Effects — Physical  rather  than 
Rational  Influence  Dominant  in  Making  Regulations  with  Refer- 
ence to  Hours  of  Labor — To  Wages — To  Allowing  Sons  to  Follow 
their  Fathers'  Trade,  or  any  Trade  in  which  they  Need  to  Experi- 
ment— Laws  Interfering  with  both  Laborers  and  Leaders  in  Indus- 
try— Laws  against  Combination  and  in  Faror  of  Competition — 
Self-seeking  Results  in  Business  Cannot  be  Corrected  by  Laws 
Changing  Physical  Conditions — Influence  of  Capitalists  in  Favor  of 
Democracy  in  Government — Efforts  of  Capitalists  for  the  Welfare 
of  their  Employees — For  Agricultural  Laborers — Such  Capitalists 
are  Needed  and  should  be  Honored — False  Views  of  Human 
Equality  Fail  to  Recognize  this  Fact — Equality  Desirable  because 
it  Brings  Happiness — and  this  is  often  Mental — Logical  Results  of 
False  Views  as  Embodied  in  Socialism  and  Anarchism — The 
Threatened  Decay  of  Democracy  in  our  Own  Times — It  is  some- 
times Wisest  for  One  to  Accept  the  Existing  Conditions  of  Life, 
and  Make  the  Best  of  Them. 

THIS  is  no  place  in  which  to  discuss  in  detail  the  various 
measures  of  legislation  and  administration  through 
which  a  government  can  aid  in  preventing  the  physi- 
cal from  outweighing  the  mental.  We  can  consider  here 
merely  a  few  of  the  principles  underlying  such  measures. 
The  most  important  of  these  principles  seems  to  be  that 
the  primary  object  of  government,  as  related  to  morals,  is 
to  prevent  individuals  from  interfering  with  one  another's 
mental  development, — in  other  words,  to  prevent  them 
from  doing  that  which  shall  make  it  impossible  or  difficult 

292 


FREEDOM  OF  CONSCIENCE  293 

for  themselves  or  their  neighbors  to  carry  out  the  prompt- 
ings of  their  mental  desires.  There  is  nothing  that  large 
numbers  in  every  community  like  better  than  to  tyrannize 
over  their  families  and  associates, — to  dictate  to  them  what 
shall  be  their  beliefs  and  practices  with  reference  not  only  to 
little  matters  like  those  of  fashion  and  custom,  but  to  great 
matters  like  those  pertaining  to  religion,  to  education,  to 
social  and  political  action,  and  to  business  and  industry. 
One  of  the  chief  ends  of  government  is  to  set  the  individual 
free  from  such  tyranny,  to  give  him  liberty,  as  we  say.  Only 
as  he  possesses  this,  will  it  be  possible  for  him,  in  many  cases, 
to  conform  his  outward  conduct  to  that  inward  guidance 
which  is  best  both  for  himself  and  his  fellows. 

It  is  because  of  a  growing  belief  in  this  inward  guidance 
that  most  modern  governments  allow  the  citizen  to  be  an 
adherent  of  any  religion  that  appeals  to  his  own  conscience. 
The  majority  of  them  no  longer  persecute,  and  few  of  them 
tax,  for  purposes  in  which  he  has  no  interest,  the  man  who 
does  not  belong  to  a  church  established  by  the  state.  They 
have  learned  that,  so  far  as  concerns  the  outward  demeanor 
which  government  seeks  to  regulate,  the  whole  object  of 
religion  is  thwarted  when  conditions  are  such  as  to  frighten 
or  force  one  into  misrepresenting  in  form  that  which  con- 
trols him  in  spirit. 

Similar  facts  can  be  stated  with  reference  to  education. 
At  one  time  in  the  world,  there  was  a  theory  that  the  best 
way  to  maintain  order  and  peace  in  a  community  was  to 
keep  the  people  in  a  state  of  ignorance.  The  less  they  knew, 
the  more  pliant  it  was  supposed  that  they  would  be  to  the 
dictation  of  the  government  officials.  But  in  modern  times 
it  has  been  discovered  that,  where  there  are  no  counter- 
acting influences,  the  more  intelligent  a  man  is  the  more 
inclined  he  is  to  orderly  and  peaceful  behavior;  and  the 
complementary  fact  is  also  true — that  the  more  intelligent 
the  officials  are,  the  more  inclined  they  are  to  make  and  to 
administer  laws  in  a  way  to  lead  to  such  behavior.  These 
are  sufficient  reasons  for  holding  the  theory  that  the  gov- 
ernment should  establish  and  maintain  schools,  making 
education  compulsory  for  children  and  possible  for  those 
more  advanced  who  desire  it.  Nothing  could  contribute 
more  to  the  general  welfare  than  for  the  government  to  do 
this;  and  nothing,  therefore,  can  more  justify  the  levying  of 
taxes,  for  this  purpose,  upon  the  community. 


294  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

The  social  and  political  position  of  a  man  in  a  country 
also  ought  to  be  left  to  be  determined  by  mental  rather 
than  by  physical  considerations;  and  a  wise  government 
will  do  what  it  can  to  secure  this  aim.  It  can  be  done,  too, 
without  any  revolutionary  interest  or  result.  Indeed,  a 
revolution,  though  it  might  change  the  phase,  could  not 
affect  the  substance  of  the  evils  to  be  remedied.  Wherever 
men  go  in  this  world,  they  can  always  find  some  who  need 
to  be  brought  to  the  light  because  they  walk  hidden  in  the 
shadows  of  those  whom  they  follow.  This  is  no  more  true 
of  the  physical  heirs  of  the  nobility  in  a  monarchy  than  of 
the  physical  relatives  of  the  wealthy,  the  prominent,  or  the 
partisan,  in  a  republic.  As  a  result,  offices  in  the  army,  the 
navy,  and  the  Civil  Service,  that  ought  to  be  filled  by  those 
of  exceptional  ability,  experience,  or  efficiency,  as  discovered 
by  an  examination  of  what  they  know  or  have  done,  are 
often  given  to  candidates  utterly  incompetent;  or,  if  to 
others,  mainly  as  a  matter  of  accident,  not  of  design.  Some- 
times the  chief  influence  of  those  who  make  appointments 
seems  to  be  to  keep  the  capable  from  responsible  positions 
and  the  community  from  the  efficient  service  that  they 
ought  to  receive.  Nothing  could  more  clearly  manifest  the 
importance  in  this,  as  in  all  other  relations  of  life,  of  pre- 
venting the  physical  from  outweighing  the  mental. 

In  a  commercial  country  like  our  own,  the  evils  that  are 
being  considered  are  apt  to  reveal  themselves  chiefly  in 
business.  In  connection  with  this,  there  are  certain  ar- 
rangements and  methods  necessary  to  secure  economy, 
efficiency,  fair  play,  comfort,  and  health,  which,  either 
because  of  ignorance  or  exclusive  self-seeking,  are  often 
overlooked.  To  these  it  is  the  clear  duty  of  the  government 
to  call  attention  by  enjoining  certain  courses  to  be  pursued, 
and  prescribing  penalties  for  their  violation.  There  ought 
to  be  laws,  for  instance,  with  reference  to  the  methods  of 
obtaining  and  preparing  the  materials  needed  for  use  in 
business;  laws  to  prevent  watersheds  from  being  denuded 
of  soil  because  their  bordering  forests  whose  roots  held  it  in 
place  have  been  removed  and  not  replanted;  laws  to  con- 
serve and  distribute  mineral  resources  and  water  privileges; 
laws  to  encourage  and  help  Actual  settlers  in  taking  posses- 
sion of  fertile  lands  and  developing  them,  as  well  as  to  super- 
vise, at  least,  by  way  of  advice,  the  nature  of  crops  and  their 
transportation,  storage,  and  sale  so  as  to  avoid  loss  through 


LAWS  REGULATING  BUSINESS  295 

speculation.  There  ought  to  be  laws  to  secure  in  factories 
plenty  of  ventilation  and  sanitation,  and,  in  every  place, 
cleanliness  and  wholesome  surroundings,  both  indoors  and 
outdoors.  There  ought  to  be  laws  against  the  employment 
of  children,  both  because  it  may  keep  them  from  acquiring 
education  and  training,  and  because  the  excessive  exertion 
involved  may  stunt  their  growth  and  injure  their  health. 
There  ought  to  be  laws  enabling  the  needy  to  find  work ;  pro- 
hibiting overwork,  either  in  kind  or  duration;  or  injurious 
standing,  stooping,  or  stretching  on  the  part  of  laborers;  or 
the  employment  of  machinery  so  constructed  as  to  be  irk- 
some or  dangerous;  or  the  handling,  in  industries,  of  in- 
gredients of  such  a  nature  as  to  be  poisonous,  or  in  any  way 
harmful  to  the  user.  There  ought  to  be  laws,  too,  making 
employers  accountable  for  accidents  that  a  reasonable 
amount  of  expense  and  contrivance  on  their  part  could  pre- 
vent, and  there  ought  to  be  laws  insuring  a  living  wage  for 
all,  as  well  as  changes  in  the  nature  of  the  work  required  of 
the  aged,  or  providing  means  of  pensioning  them  when  grow- 
ing infirmities  have  rendered  them  no  longer  able  to  labor 
as  they  once  could.  These  and  other  similar  provisions,  the 
simplest  promptings  of  mental,  in  the  sense  of  rational  and 
non-selfish,  desire  would  seem  to  demand. 

Frequently,  however,  legislators,  or  the  people  who  elect 
them,  are  tempted  to  go  beyond  provisions  of  this  character. 
Purchasers  who  are  not  disposed  to  pay  prices  that  are 
asked  or  employees' who  are  dissatisfied  with  wages  or  other 
conditions  of  labor,  succeed  in  getting  the  government  to 
interfere  and  to  pass  laws  in  accordance  with  their  individ- 
ual, and,  in  many  cases,  selfish,  interests.  In  some  instances 
and  countries  this  process  has  gone  so  far  that  the  govern- 
ment has  assumed  complete  control  and  management  of  the 
forms  of  industry  against  which  complaints  have  been  made. 
This  course  may  succeed  for  a  time  in  lowering  prices  and 
raising  wages;  but  it  is  a  question  whether,  in  the  long  run, 
it  does  not  lessen  the  quality  of  the  product  or  service 
rendered,  and  very  greatly  increase  the  cost  of  it  to  people 
in  general.  One  argument,  showing  that  this  may  be  the 
case,  seems  to  have  been  presented  lately  to  the  experience 
of  almost  every  reader  of  this  book.  A  few  years  ago  the 
railways  of  our  country  outnumbered  in  mileage  those  of  all 
Europe  taken  together,  while  prices  here  for  the  transpor- 
tation of  freight  and  passengers  were  about  half  what  they 


296  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

were  there,  and  the  accommodations,  as  a  rule,  were  better. 
Private  enterprise  had  pushed  these  railways  of  ours,  as  a 
government  never  would  have  felt  justified  in  doing,  into 
almost  every  uninhabited  region  of  the  country;  and  to 
them,  almost  solely,  we  owe  the  development  of  the  States 
of  the  West  and  Southwest.  Some  of  these  railways — but 
possibly  not  half  of  them — were  very  successful  financially; 
and  good  railway  bonds  were,  for  years,  considered  among 
the  safest  investments  in  the  market.  Nevertheless,  there 
was  much  speculation,  especially  in  stocks;  and  much  of 
this  was  manipulated  dishonestly,  causing  some  to  become 
suddenly  rich  and  others  as  suddenly  poor.  Speculation, 
however,  is  not  confined  to  railway  stocks;  and  it  needed 
remedies  not  confined  to  them.  Besides  this,  it  was  largely 
carried  on  by  those  who  had  nothing  to  do  with  the  practical 
management  of  the  railways  themselves.  But  people  sup- 
posed that  it  had,  and  that  the  money  made  by  speculators 
was  due  to  political  influence  able  to  obtain  franchises  and 
public  property  at  less  than  its  real  value,  as  well  as  due 
also  to  making  unfair  discrimination  and  overcharging  for 
the  transportation  furnished. 

There  were  various  ways  in  which  these  evils,  so  far  as 
they  had  been  actually  ascertained,  could  have  been  cor- 
rected. But,  as  so  often  happens,  the  easiest  way — the 
physical  way — was  chosen, — the  way  of  government  inter- 
ference exercising  authority  in  lowering  transportation 
charges.  This  was  followed,  after  a  time,  when  workmen 
also  complained  of  their  treatment  by  the  railways,  by  the 
shortening  of  the  hours  of  labor,  with  an  accompanying 
increase  of  pay  for  the  service  rendered.  As  a  result,  some 
of  the  roads  did  not  receive  sufficient  to  justify  them  in 
expenditures  needed  in  order  to  keep  their  equipment  in 
good  condition ;  and,  after  a  time,  they  lost  their  expert  work- 
men because  of  the  great  increase  in  wages  offered  them 
in  factories  providing  munitions  for  the  European  war. 
Then  our  own  country  entered  the  war;  and  the  railways 
apparently  proved  unable  to  meet  its  exceptional  demands 
upon  transportation.  So,  as  a  temporary  expedient  to  be 
applied  only  during  the  emergency,  the  government  took 
control  of  them.  We  all  know  the  result  upon  people  in 
general.  At  present  it  can  be  said  that  the  convenience  and 
comfort  of  the  individual  traveler  has  been  greatly  lessened, 
while  prices  for  transportation  have  been  greatly  increased; 


GOVERNMENT  CONTROL  OF  BUSINESS  297 

and,  in  case  the  railways  do  not  pay  their  expenses,  we  shall 
all  have  to  be  taxed  to  make  up  the  deficit.28  Yet  many 
influenced  apparently  more  by  theory  than  by  fact,  are  now 
saying,  after  the  war  is  over,  that  this  temporary  arrange- 
ment should  be  made  permanent.  If  it  were  made  so,  the 
result  would  certainly  have  a  tendency,  at  least,  to  cause 
trains  to  be  run  for  the  convenience  of  the  operatives  rather 
than  of  the  public,  just  as  are  the  government-controlled 
telegraphs  in  Germany.  There,  unless,  possibly,  from  large 
cities,  one  can  send  no  messages  out  of  ordinary  business 
hours,  no  matter  what  may  be  the  emergency.  In  our  coun- 
try the  railways  alone  might  furnish  us  with  many  millions 
of  voters  who,  if  they  chose,  could  dictate  the  action  of  the 
government  toward  them,  and,  if  the  government  accepted 
their  dictation,  might  by  their  votes  enable  the  party  in 
power  to  remain  there  almost  indefinitely.  This  suggests  a 
reason  why  government  ownership,  or  even  management,  is 
apt  to  be  less  successful  under  a  democracy  than  under  an 
autocracy.  In  America,  political  administration  in  large 
cities  has  usually  shown  extravagance  in  expenditures  and  in- 
efficiency in  results.  This  is  because  politicians  rather  than 
experts  have  been  at  the  head  of  affairs.  In  Germany  and, 
for  many  years  in  the  city  of  Washington  in  our  own  coun- 
try, the  officials  have  been  appointed  and  not  elected,  and 
for  this  reason  the  general  conduct  of  affairs  has  been  more 
satisfactory.  It  certainly  would  be  unwise  to  place  the  in- 
dustrial development  of  our  country  under  the  conditions 
which,  so  far  in  our  history,  have  been  most  conspicuous  in 
proving  that  our  form  of  democracy  is  not  completely 
successful.     To  do  this  might  very  easily  in  a  short  time 

28  In  the  five  months  to  December  1st — the  latest  date  for  which  a 
statement  is  now  at  hand — the  railroads  moved  not  very  much  more 
traffic  than  in  the  corresponding  period  of  19 17,  when  they  were  under 
private  management,  but  their  operating  expenses  were  greater  by  more 
than  a  hundred  million  dollars  a  month,  or  at  the  rate  of  a  billion  and  a 
quarter  a  year.  In  July,  operating  expenses  took  sixty-nine  per  cent. 
of  gross  receipts ;  in  August,  seventy-one  per  cent. ;  in  September,  seventy- 
six  per  cent. ;  in  October,  seventy-eight  per  cent. ;  in  November,  eighty- 
three  per  cent.  In  eleven  months  of  government  operation  patrons  of 
the  Pennsylvania  Railroad  paid  sixty-six  million  dollars  more  for  about 
the  same  quantity  of  service — due  to  advanced  rates — but  operating 
expenses  were  ninety- three  million  dollars  more,  and,  after  paying  taxes 
and  rents,  the  sum  remaining  for  interest  and  dividends  dropped  from 
forty-eight  million  dollars  in  1917  to  nineteen  millions  in  1918. — Satur- 
day Evening  Post,  Philadelphia,  February  22,  19 19. 


298  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

throw  such  discredit  upon  our  institutions  as  to  lead  to  their 
ultimate  overthrow.  Even  in  an  autocracy,  government 
management,  though  not  so  threatening  to  the  general 
welfare,  is  not  wholly  safe.  One  reason  why,  in  Germany,  a 
few  at  the  head  of  the  government  were  able  to  begin  the 
recent  war,  and  were  able  to  continue  it,  notwithstanding 
enormous  loss  of  life  and  property,  is  because  the  govern- 
ment had  come  to  control  the  minutest  details  of  so  many  dif- 
ferent employments.  Almost  any  one  who,  by  word  or  deed, 
opposed  the  government,  or  opposed  a  representative  of  the 
government  happening  to  be  one  step  above  him,  might 
be  turned  out  of  his  position,  whether  a  telegraph  operator, 
a  brakeman  on  a  railway,  a  pastor  in  a  city  church,  or  a 
professor  in  a  university.  There  is  no  doubt  that  this  ar- 
rangement keeps  large  numbers  of  people  orderly  and  dili- 
gent. But  notice  that  it  also  keeps  them  where  they  can  be 
easily  made  to  obey  the  orders  of  those  who  are  their  mas- 
ters,— a  result  that,  after  a  time,  is  certain  to  follow  wherever 
government  interference  has  deprived  people  in  general  of 
the  stimulus,  the  inclination,  and,  as  a  consequence,  the 
ability  to  give  free  expression  to  their  individual  mental 
desires. 

That  which  connects  this  subject  with  our  present  dis- 
cussion is  the  readily  recognizable  fact  that  the  kind  of 
government  interference  indicated,  so  far  as  it  may  prove 
injurious,  is  traceable  to  the  subordination  of  mental  to 
physical  influence.  Mental  influence  is  always  exerted  in 
the  rational  and  non-selfish  way  that  reaches  a  decision 
after  a  full  and  fair  presentation  of  facts  and  arguments  by 
those  interested  in  both  sides  of  the  question  involved. 
Physical  influence  is  exerted  in  ways  exactly  the  opposite. 
In  a  democracy  it  usually  relies  upon  the  numbers  of  people 
who  can  be  brought  into  political  union  and  made  to  de- 
mand the  same  thing,  very  often  not  because  they  all  think 
alike,  but  because  many  of  them  seldom  think  at  all.  The 
physical  method  is  exemplified  also  in  the  numbers  of  people 
induced  to  threaten  to  vote  against  a  legislator  in  case  he 
fails  to  obey  their  dictates;  in  the  numbers  of  legislators 
combining  to  overawe  an  executive  sufficiently  to  make  him 
sign  any  bill  that  they  may  pass;  and  in  the  numbers  of 
agencies  that  can  be  used  by  a  government  in  carrying  out 
its  laws.  This  same  physical  method,  in  case  of  dispute 
between  two  parties,  the  success  of  each  of  which  depends 


ARBITRATION  299 

upon  cooperation  in  the  same  business,  finds  no  more  than 
logical  fulfillment  in  a  course  that  causes  one  of  the  two  to 
call  a  strike,  burn  or  smash  buildings  or  machinery,  and,  if 
possible,  force  politicians  to  action  in  their  behalf  irrespec- 
tive of  exercising  justice  toward  the  other  party ;  or  else  in  a 
course  equally  logical  that  causes  the  other  of  the  parties  to 
call  on  the  militia,  get  them  to  fire  on  their  opponents,  and 
oblige  these  to  submit  without  question  to  whatever  orders 
are  given  them.  In  both  cases  each  party  is  carrying  out 
the  principle  of  ruling  men  through  the  exertion  of  physical 
force;  and  it  is  doing  this  because  of  a  lack  of  confidence  in 
the  effects  of  mental  influence. 

It  is  to  prevent  and,  if  possible,  counteract  such  condi- 
tions of  action  and  belief,  that  wise  legislators,  of  late,  have 
been  endeavoring  to  induce,  and,  if  possible,  to  oblige  by 
law,  both  parties  in  such  disputes  to  submit  to  a  settlement 
of  their  differences  through  arbitration.  This  is  a  method 
through  which  a  number  of  selected  men,  sitting  as  a  court 
of  justice,  hear  what  may  be  said  by  representatives  of  those 
at  variance,  and  try  to  reach  a  decision  which,  through 
compromise  at  least,  if  not  through  means  more  satisfactory, 
shall  deal  fairly  with  all.  Unfortunately,  however,  there 
seem  to  be  in  our  country  those  who  suppose  that  they  can 
accept  the  principle  of  arbitration  in  form,  and  yet  not  at  all 
in  spirit, — in  such  a  way,  in  fact,  as  not  to  surrender  in  the 
least  their  reliance  upon  pltysical  force.  A  few  months  ago 
an  issue  of  the  Literary  Digest  contained  several  quotations 
from  papers  representing  labor  organizations,  which  argued 
that  boards  of  arbitration  could  not  be  acceptable  to  em- 
ployees unless  composed  entirely  of  those  of  their  own  class. 
The  same  magazine  in  its  issue  for  March  2, 191 8,  quotes  the 
following  from  one  of  the  same  class  of  papers, — The  New 
York  Call.  ''In  a  general  way  we  should  favor  .  .  .  com- 
pulsory arbitration  on  the  part  of  the  government.  It  can- 
not and  dare  not  compel  the  laborers,  but  it  can  compel  the 
employers  with  the  threat  of  taking  over  the  control  of 
their  business.  ...  In  case  both  sides  are  stubborn  .  .  . 
the  government  would  naturally  follow  the  line  of  least  re- 
sistance. The  weakest  goes  to  the  wall,  and,  in  this  case, 
it  is  not  labor  that  is  the  weakest.  So,  on  the  principle 
that '  might  makes  right/  we  choose  government  arbitration 
without  troubling  to  give  ethical  reasons  for  our  choice." 
Here  is  a  clear,  unadulterated  statement  of  reliance  upon 


300  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

physical  force,  and  of  the  purpose  to  apply  it.  There  is  no 
necessity  of  arguing  what  would  be  the  result  if,  in  a  free 
country  like  ours,  physical  force — the  conception  that 
'  might  makes  right ' — should  come  to  be  advocated  by  any 
large  number  of  people.  Such  a  principle  could  not  rule 
anywhere  without  enthroning  tyranny. 

Even  at  present  there  are  indications  that  this  kind  of 
rule  is  beginning  among  us.  Take,  for  instance,  the  laws 
that  have  been  passed,  because  of  more  or  less  compulsion 
exercised  by  organized  voters,  with  reference  to  the  number 
of  hours  that  should  constitute  a  day's  work.  Everybody 
who  thinks,  knows  that  one  who  is  not  interested  in  his 
work — i.e.,  who  is  not  entering  into  it  mentally — is  tired  at 
the  end  of  six  hours;  but  that  the  one  who  is  interested  in  it 
is  often  not  tired  at  the  end  of  twelve  hours, — indeed,  if 
anxious  to  "get  on,"  as  people  say,  the  worst  possible  ex- 
perience of  being  tired  will  come  if  he  be  stopped  when  he 
wants  to  keep  working.  To  cause  all  t>y  law  to  accommo- 
date their  actions  to  the  physical  requirements  of  the  more 
indolent  and  inefficient,  is  to  exercise  the  very  worst  form  of 
tyranny  over  the  mental  nature.  It  is  well  enough  to  pre- 
vent employees  from  acting  in  an  inhuman  way  by  refusing 
to  accept  a  service  of  six  or  eight  hours  a  day  from  those  who 
desire  it.  But  this  is  a  different  thing  from  endeavoring  to 
suppress  the  interest  and  enthusiasm,  and  rendering  im- 
possible the  rightful  advancement,  of  those  who  are  actuated 
by  mental  desire. 

So  with  reference  to  wages.  One  man  can  do  twice  as 
much  work  in  an  hour  as  another  man  can,  or,  even  though 
the  quantity  produced  by  both  may  be  the  same,  the  quality 
in  the  one  case  may  be  twice  as  good  as  in  the  other.  A  law 
that  tends  to  make  the  wages  of  both  men  exactly  the  same 
is  not  calculated  to  increase  the  efficiency  of  the  former 
workman,  or  to  lessen  the  inefficiency  of  the  latter,  yet  this 
is  the  sort  of  law  that  large  numbers  who  themselves  are 
indolent  and  indifferent  approve;  and  that  which  they  par- 
ticularly disapprove  is  an  added  requirement,  which  alone 
could  insure  justice,  enjoining,  in  addition  to  a  minimum 
wage  sufficient  to  furnish  adequate  means  of  support,  an 
extra  wage  for  extra  work.  It  is  to  be  feared  that  what  not 
a  few  of  them  really  want,  and  what  the  law  as  formulated 
not  infrequently  accomplishes,  is  the  enabling  of  the  most 
inefficient  to  receive  as  high  wages  as  if  they  were  the  oppo- 


GO VERNMENT  REG ULA TION  OF  IND  USTRY         3°I 

site.  Neither  in  the  framing  of  a  law  that  omits  peculiar 
recognition  for  excellence,  nor  in  the  practical  effects  of  such 
a  law,  is  there  any  evidence  of  a  desire  to  prevent  physical 
from  outweighing  mental  considerations. 

The  same  might  be  said  of  many  other  laws  too  numerous 
to  mention  here,  and  not  needed  in  order  to  render  more 
intelligent  the  principle  that  is  being  illustrated.  These 
laws  have  all  of  them  a  tendency  to  keep  the  individual  from 
following  his  own  mental  bent.  Such  are  those  that,  owing 
to  the  plea  that  there  should  not  be  too  many  rival  workmen 
in  one  trade,  prevent  sons  from  availing  themselves  of  their 
father's  experience,  and  probably  of  their  own  inherited 
aptitudes,  by  learning  and  practicing  his  trade;  or  that  pre- 
vent others  from  leaving  one  trade  and  entering  another ;  or, 
before  they  have  determined  definitely  upon  any  one  of 
them,  from  experimenting  in  different  lines  of  work  in  order 
to  ascertain  that  for  which  they  are  mentally  fitted.  The 
wording  of  laws  that  produce  results  of  this  kind  is  often 
intentionally  vague,  but  it  will  usually  be  found  that  their 
practical  effect  is  to  keep  down  in  life  those  who  are  looking 
about  in  different  directions,  because  prompted  to  make  an 
effort  to  rise.  This  prompting,  so  far  as  it  is  due  to  a  man's 
mental  desire  to  make  the  most  of  himself  in  order  to  be 
able  to  do  the  most  for  his  fellows,  is  right.  The  govern- 
ment that  does  not  recognize  the  fact  is  wrong.  Whether 
termed  democratic  or  autocratic,  if  its  laws  interfere  with 
the  legitimate  expression  in  conduct  of  such  desires,  it  is 
exercising  tyranny  over  the  mental  nature.  Wherever  this 
is  done,  the  progress  and  welfare  of  the  entire  community  is 
more  or  less  retarded. 

Nor  does  the  influence  of  such  laws  affect  solely  the  young, 
the  obscure,  the  inefficient,  or  the  unprosperous,  who  might 
be  supposed  to  be  the  only  ones  unable  successfully  to  resist 
hostile  legislation.  Of  late  years,  almost  every  class  of  the 
community,  if  too  small  to  constitute,  or  at  least  control,  a 
majority  of  it,  has  been  handicapped  by  being  made  subject 
to  unnecessary  restrictions.  These  have  been  put  upon 
methods  resulting  from  the  experience  of  the  most  able  men 
in  the  country,  not  always  because  they  have  been  dishonest 
or  even  selfishly  inconsiderate,  which,  of  course,  would 
justify  such  restrictions,  but  apparently,  sometimes,  merely 
because  they  have  been  successful.  The  theory  of  many 
seems  to  be  that  to  make  the  mental  leaders  of  industry — 


302  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

the  men  who  have  had  the  brains  to  devise  and  develop 
great  enterprises — less  successful,  is  to  make  their  followers 
— men  for  whom  they  have  created  work  and  to  whom  they 
are  giving  wages — more  successful.  Of  course,  no  theory 
could  be  more  contrary  to  the  truth.  A  man  whose  thought- 
ful diligence  and  thrift  has  enabled  him  to  rise  to  a  position 
in  which  he  can  control  large  sums  of  money  is  the  one  best 
able  to  help  others  to  obtain  a  similar  position.  He  is  the 
one  best  able  to  pay  a  large  price  for  work,  and  to  pay  it 
steadily.  He  is  the  one  best  able  to  purchase  and  develop 
facilities  for  transportation;  and  he  is  the  one,  too,  who  can 
furnish  the  necessities  of  life  at  the  least  cost  to  the  con- 
sumer. This  latter  is  an  important  fact  that  seems  fre- 
quently to  be  overlooked.  Let  us  notice,  for  a  moment, 
what  it  involves.  Suppose  that  one  wishes  to  have  printed 
a  circular.  The  principal  expense  connected  with  this  is 
incurred  in  paying  for  the  setting  of  the  type.  To  set  this 
for  one  circular  costs  as  much  as  for  a  million.  Therefore, 
aside  from  the  paper,  the  time,  and  the  fuel  expended  in 
running  the  press,  one  circular,  if  only  one  be  issued,  must 
necessarily  cost  very  many  times  as  much  as  each  of  the 
million,  if  all  are  issued.  The  same  principle  applies  in  every 
case  where  enhanced  facilities  for  production  increase  the 
output.  When  the  product  of  an  oil  well,  before  it  could 
reach  a  market,  had  to  be  pumped  into  barrels,  carted 
scores  of  miles,  and  sent  on  a  long  trip  by  rail,  it  cost  a  great 
deal  more  than  it  does  now,  when  from  the  very  mouth  of 
the  well  it  flows  to  market  through  a  pipe-line.  When 
watches  were  made  by  hand,  a  good  one  was  sometimes 
worth  four  or  five  hundred  dollars.  Now  that  they  can  be 
turned  out  by  machinery,  one  that  will  keep  almost  perfect 
time  can  be  purchased  for  less  than  a  twentieth  of  that 
sum. 

It  is  a  recognition  of  this  lessening  of  the  cost  both  of  pro- 
duction and  of  the  thing  produced  that,  in  modern  times, 
has  caused  the  great  combinations  between  different 
business  corporations.  For  instance,  when  five  separate 
companies  unite,  there  are  thousands  of  towns  in  the  coun- 
try in  which  one  agent  in  one  office  can  do  all  the  business 
previously  requiring  five  agents,  occupying  five  offices. 
Merely  because  such  combinations  prove  economical  for 
capitalists,  is  it  for  the  interest  of  the  purchaser  for  whom 
also  they  are  economical,  that  they  should  be  forbidden  by 


COMPETITION  VS.  COOPERATION  303 

law?  Yet,  influenced  by  a  desire  to  conform  statements  to 
the  prejudices  of  ignorant  constituents,  certain  of  our  politi- 
cians keep  telling  people  that,  in  order  to  preserve  the 
laborer  and  the  public  from  themselves  losing  the  money 
that  is  made  by  the  capitalists,  these  combiriations  must  be 
broken  up  into  separate  companies;  that  only  when  the 
latter  are  rivals  and  antagonistic  will  they  watch  and  inter- 
fere with  one  another  sufficiently  to  prevent  dishonesty  and 
extortion.  What  facts  can  be  instanced  to  justify  this  con- 
ception? Has  competition  in  the  past  proved  to  be  a  pana- 
cea that  can  cure  dishonesty  and  extortion  ?  If  not,  then  the 
conception  must  be  derived,  not  from  fact,  but  from  theory. 
Is  the  theory  sound  then?  Have  we  any  reason  to  suppose 
that  wrong  in  business  methods  can  be  prevented  by  rivalry 
and  antagonism?  What  influence  do  these  latter  exert? 
Almost  exclusively  a  physical  influence.  They  are  powerful 
because,  if  not  actually  backed  by  physical  force,  they  are 
always  more  or  less  associated  with  it.  But  that  which  can 
best  overcome  wrong  of  any  kind  is  mental,  rational,  hu- 
mane, altruistic  influence.  Unless  it  can  be  shown  that 
there  is  more  of  this  in  competition  than  there  is  in  com- 
bination, it  cannot  be  proved  that  to  substitute  the  one  for 
the  other  would  lessen  the  wrong.  A  little  thought,  too, 
would  probably  cause  many  of  us  to  conclude  that  of  the 
two,  that  which  is  influenced  most  by  the  mental  is  combina- 
tion. It  is  a  form  of  cooperation,  and  cooperation  is  always 
a  later  result  of  civilization — a  later  effect  upon  it  of  that 
knowledge,  calculation,  and  sympathy  that  are  associated 
with  mental  development — than  is  competition.  It  is  not 
logical,  therefore,  to  suppose  that  the  latter  will  prove  a 
cure  for  that  which  is  non-mental  in  the  former.  The  more 
likely  result  will  be  just  the  opposite. 

In  connection  with  this  subject,  too,  we  should  not  neg- 
lect to  recall  that  which  always  needs  to  be  borne  in  mind, 
namely,  the  impossibility  of  correcting  any  abuse  that  de- 
mands a  mental  and  psychical  remedy  by  any  mere  change 
in  external  material  conditions.  The  evils  that  reveal 
themselves  in  any  form  of  business  cannot  be  satisfactorily 
corrected  by  mere  laws.  The  methods  used  are  largely  in- 
effective unless  they  reach  the  innermost  source  of  character 
in  those  who  do  the  business.  This  fact,  indeed,  is  recog- 
nized, indirectly,  though  not  directly  by  the  only  men  who 
seem  to  place  their  chief  reliance  upon  a  change  in  laws. 


304  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

No  argument  in  favor  of  substituting  competition  for  com- 
bination seems  quite  as  convincing  to  them  as  the  supposi- 
tion that  competition  will  tend  to  lessen  the  influence  of 
individuals  who  have  come  to  be  capitalists,  or,  at  least,  to 
have  the  control  of  capital.  This  argument  has  a  basis  of 
truth.  But  whether  it  will  benefit  or  injure  the  community 
to  lessen  the  influence  of  these  individuals  depends  entirely 
upon  their  personal  character.  A  certain  number  of  the 
indolent,  ignorant,  thoughtless,  and,  for  this  reason,  ineffi- 
cient, may  believe  that  the  very  fact  that  a  man  has  reached 
a  position  where  he  has  control  of  capital  indicates  that  he 
has  taken  an  unfair  advantage  and  pushed  himself  into  the 
place  that  he  occupies  by  pushing  others  out  of  it.  In  some 
cases  this  is  true.  But  it  is  true  very  rarely,  Capitalists 
who  have  money  to  invest  do  not  elect  a  man  of  this  kind 
to  control  it.  As  a  rule,  he  is  one  who  by  diligence,  self- 
denial,  economy,  intelligence,  and  alertness  has  shown  both 
mental  and  moral  qualities  that  make  him  superior  to  his 
fellows,  and  therefore  entitled  to  a  superior  position.  Not 
only  does  his  own  corporation  need  him  there,  but  often 
also  the  whole  community. 

That  this  is  so  is  a  fact  of  which  the  slightest  knowledge 
of  conditions  in  our  own  country,  either  in  the  past  or  in  the 
immediate  present,  ought  to  convince  any  candid  mind. 
Our  "War  of  the  Revolution,"  was  conducted  to  a  successful 
issue,  and  the  form  of  our  government  made  that  of  a  re- 
public rather  than  a  monarchy,  owing  mainly  to  the  influence 
of  George  Washington;  and  he  was,  at  that  time,  the  most 
conspicuous,  if  not  the  wealthiest,  capitalist  of  the  country. 
An  analogous  result  has  been  exemplified  at  almost  every 
critical  stage  of  our  nation's  history.  Not  a  few,  but  prob- 
ably the  majority,  of  those  who  in  private  or  public  life  have 
successfully  advocated  needed  changes  or  reforms  have 
been  men  who,  like  Theodore  Roosevelt,  have  inherited  or 
acquired  a  fortune  large  enough  to  enable  them  to  support 
their  families  without  the  need  of  salaries  dependent  upon 
the  continuance  of  popular  favor.  This  is  not  the  only 
reason,  but  it  is  one  very  material  reason,  why  they  have 
dared  to  defy  party  dictation  and  public  clamor  until  they 
have  overcome  opposition.  Everything  that  is  good  in  this 
world  seems  to  start  in  a  good  individual's  initiative;  and, 
therefore,  everything  that  conditions  this  individual  so  that 
he  can  act  freely  is  an  agency  for  good.    At  the  opening  of 


CAPITALISTS  AND  LABORERS  305 

the  great  war  of  191 7,  hardly  one  college  student  who  was 
a  capitalist  in  his  own  right,  or  the  son  of  a  capitalist,  failed 
to  enlist  almost  instantly  for  service  at  the  front,  while 
thousands  who  were  too  old  to  do  this  gratuitously  placed 
at  the  disposal  of  the  Government  all  their  savings,  salaries, 
and  services.  Thousands  upon  thousands  of  intelligent 
working-men  who  were  not  capitalists  did  the  same.  All 
honor  to  them!  But  it  is,  nevertheless,  true  that  while  the 
general  action  of  the  capitalists  tended  to  make  the  war  for 
the  liberty  of  the  ordinary  man  a  success,  the  action  of  a 
considerable  number  of  the  working  men  tended  to  make  it 
a  failure.    See  the  note  at  the  bottom  of  the  page. 29 

What  has  been  said  of  the  relative  influence  of  capitalists 
and  laborers  is  true  as  applied  especially  to  interests  that  are 
distinctly  social,  domestic,  educational,  and  religious.  Sixty 
or  seventy  years  ago,  when  manufacturing  on  a  large  scale 
in  our  country  first  began,  provision  for  the  safety,  comfort, 
and  health  of  the  operatives  was  included,  as  a  rule,  in 
every  plan  for  a  new  industrial  center,  and  in  proportion  to 
the  knowledge  of  the  day  with  reference  to  the  requirements 
of  such  subjects,  was  consistently  carried  out.  Many  now 
living  can  recall  the  care  that  was  exercised  in  Lowell  and 
other  manufacturing  centers  of  New  England  in  the  con- 
struction of  factories  and  homes,  in  the  provisions  made  for 
the  schooling  of  the  children,  and  the  welcome  extended  to 
the  operatives  by  the  churches.  It  is  a  fact  that,  in  later 
years,  many  of  these  conditions  have  been  changed  for  less 
favorable  ones.  But  they  have  been  changed  not  so  much 
through  the  influence  of  the  capitalists  as  of  the  labor- 
ers. The  former  had  made  the  conditions  so  inviting  that, 
in  connection  with  the  extension  of  business  due  to  their 
sagacity,  the  crowds  of  laborers,  mostly  foreigners,  that 
flocked  to  the  manufacturing  centers  overflowed  the  quarters 
that  had  been  made  to  accommodate  a  smaller  number,  and 
accepted  without  protest  those  that  were  inadequate.  Only 
after  the  capitalists  had  learned  this  fact  from  the  acquies- 
cence of  the  laborers,  were  some  of  the  former  tempted  to 
let  the  latter  live  as  they  chose.     Very  many  employers, 

3'  A  report  issued  by  the  National  Industrial  Conference  Board  shows 
that  during  the  six  months'  period  from  April  6  to  October  6, 19 17,  after 
the  opening  of  the  war,  there  were  strikes  in  2521  establishments,  that  a 
total  of  283,402  men  were  idle,  and  that  6,285,519  days  of  production 
were  lost  thereby. 


306  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

however,  have  not  yielded  to  this  temptation.  They  are 
still  making  efforts,  often  at  great  expense  to  themselves, 
to  better  the  sanitary  and  social  conditions  of  those  whom 
they  employ.  There  are  hundreds,  perhaps  thousands,  of 
factories  and  villages  in  the  country,  built  by  them,  where  the 
provisions  for  safety  in  the  handling  of  machinery,  and  for 
comfort  in  homes,  would  not  and  could  not  have  been  con- 
ceived by  associations  of  the  laborers  themselves.  To  secure 
such  results,  these  laborers  would  not  have  had  sufficient 
scientific  knowledge  or  familiarity  with  domestic  appliances. 
Nor  is  it  true  that  these  arrangements  are  for  the  purpose  of 
extorting  money  from  the  operatives.  It  is  largely  for  the 
purpose  of  attracting  to  the  works  a  set  of  operatives  who 
are  self-respecting  and  doing  their  best  to  prevent  the 
physical  from  outweighing  the  mental.  The  author  himself 
has  visited  a  model  city  built  by  the  United  States  Steel 
Corporation,  where,  in  yards,  fifty  by  a  hundred  and  fifty 
feet  in  size,  sodded  and  planted  with  trees  and  vines,  fronted 
by  a  cemented  street  and  backed  by  a  cemented  alley,  many 
hundreds  of  single  and  apartment  fireproof  cottages,  fitted 
with  all  modern  appliances  in  the  way  of  electricity,  heating, 
and  bathing,  can  be  rented  for  one  half  what  is  demanded 
for  frame  cottages  of  the  same  size  in  a  much  less  cleanly 
and  attractive  environment  of  the  adjacent  large  city.  Of 
course,  it  is  true  that  such  results  are  also  owing  to  the 
growth  of  public  sentiment  as  affected  by  the  discussions  of 
earnest  reformers  and  the  agitations  of  organized  laborers. 
But  it  is  equally  true  that  the  theoretical  conceptions  of 
these  latter  could  not  be  carried  to  a  successful  practical 
issue,  were  it  not  for  the  sympathetic  cooperation  and,  in 
some  cases,  the  intelligent  superintendence  of  some  of  those 
who  possess  capital.     (See  footnote  22  on  page  245). 

This  subject  is  of  particular  interest  at  the  present  time 
in  our  country  because  of  an  effort  to  extend  to  agricultural 
districts,  which  it  is  proposed  to  bring  within  reach  of  sol- 
diers returning  from  the  war,  the  same  kind  of  benefits, 
material  and  intellectual,  that  have  done  so  much  to  pro- 
mote prosperity  in  manufacturing  and  business  districts. 
The  idea  is  to  have  a  central  farm  managed  by  an  agricul- 
tural expert  with  sufficient  money  at  his  disposal  to  purchase 
all  modern  implements  of  farming,  the  use  of  which  imple- 
ments shall  be  included  in  the  rights  pertaining  to  the  owners 
of  the  adjoining  farms.     One  can  scarcely  over-estimate  the 


HONOR  DUE  TO  CAPITALISTS  307 

advantages  of  this  arrangement.  No  better  illustration 
could  be  afforded  of  the  result  of  an  endeavor  to  prevent 
the  physical  from  outweighing  the  mental  as  applied  to  the 
business  of  farming. 

The  truth  is  that,  to  do  the  work  that  the  world  demands, 
it  is  necessary  to  enlist  in  its  service  all  the  means  of  mental 
influence  and  all  the  sources  of  mental  ability  that  can  any- 
where be  obtained.  Because  some  men  who  have  wealth 
are  mean  to  excess,  is  no  proof  that  all  or  that  the  majority 
are  so.  The  very  fact  that  there  is  such  a  thing  as  civiliza- 
tion, and  that  year  by  year  its  conditions  are  becoming 
more  and  more  humane,  furnishes  a  proof  that  those  who 
have  been  prominent,  and  leaders  in  its  advances,  have 
themselves  been  animated  by  humane  motives.  Indeed, 
great  captains  of  industry  deserve  frequently  as  much  com- 
mendation for  their  victories  achieved  for  social  betterment, 
comfort,  and  enjoyment  as  does  the  hero  of  a  battle  field  for 
that  which  has  added  to  national  welfare.  The  reason  why 
the  characters  of  men  like  these  are  deserving  of  admiration, 
their  advice  of  regard,  and  their  example  of  imitation,  is  be- 
cause of  the  mental  traits  that  they  manifest, — not  merely 
those  that  are  intellectual,  like  foresight  and  sagacity,  but 
those  that  are  volitional  and  emotional,  like  industry  and 
public-spirit.  An  individual  or  a  community  that  honors 
and  follows  such  men  is  putting  the  mental  uppermost,  and 
deserves  the  advance  in  prosperity  which  is  the  legitimate 
result  of  doing  this. 

Unfortunately,  however,  tnere  are  those  who  do  not 
recognize  this  fact.30  Some  of  them  are  ignorant  of  the 
requirements  needed  for  the  efficient  management  of  busi- 
ness. Some  of  them  aTe  unreasonably  and,  now  and  then, 
temperamentally  jealous  of  those  who  have  succeeded  in  it. 


s°  "A  valued  contemporary  tells  us  that  democracy  instinctively  and 
inevitably  distrusts  competence  and  success.  .  .  .  Suppose  no  great 
war  had  happened.  .  .  .  Suppose  a  President  had  given  cabinet  port- 
folios to  the  chairman  of  the  Bethlehem  Steel  Co.,  a  member  of  the  firm 
of  J.  P.  Mo.rgan  &  Co.,  and  the  President  of  the  Anaconda  Copper  Com- 
pany! Only  two  or  three  years  ago  the  Senate  .  .  .  had  the  hardest 
kind  of  work  to  persuade  itself  that  a  man  with  Wall  Street  banking 
experience  might  be  as  serviceable  in  a  banking  board  as  a  country- 
editor." — Leslie's  Weekly.  That  such  statements  can  be  made  of  condi- 
tions in  our  country  furnishes  one  of  the  worst  indictments  that  could  be 
brought  against  it.  The  tendency  indicated  is  certainly  one  which  all 
intelligent  people  should  resist. 


308  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

Many,  however — and  let  us  hope  the  majority — seem  to  be 
misled  by  what,  at  bottom,  is  a  praiseworthy  sentiment 
inspired  by  genuine  love  for  humanity.  They  say  that  all 
men  are  equal;  that,  therefore,  one  man  should  be  con- 
sidered as  good  as  another,  even  to  the  extent  of  allowing 
him  to  exercise  the  same  sort  of  control  over  his  fellows.  To 
say  nothing  of  the  first  of  these  statements,  the  last  two 
certainly  need  to  be  reconsidered.  They  ignore  the  fact 
that  men  are  born  with  minds  that  have  different  aptitudes, 
and,  as  they  grow  up,  are  subjected  to  different  influences  of 
education  and  experience;  and  that  these  develop  in  them 
different  mental  possibilities;  and  that,  therefore,  each  of 
them  needs  to  be  treated  and  can  be  treated  as  well  as  the 
others  and  yet,  at  the  same  time,  for  a  different  reason  and 
in  a  different  way.  You  can  treat  a  manservant  and  a 
maidservant,  a  lawyer  and  a  laboring  man,  equally  well;  and 
yet  treat  them  differently.  If  you  do  not,  probably  neither 
of  them  will  like  you.  And,  again,  if  you  do  not  treat  differ- 
ently an  intelligent  and  experienced  superintendent  in  a 
factory  from  one  who  is  a  mere  beginner,  it  is  certain  that 
the  services  of  neither  of  them  will  benefit  you. 

To  go  deeper  into  the  subject,  the  truth  is  that  equality 
is  not  affirmable  of  men  considered  physically  alone.  Some 
men  are  always  physically  bigger  and  stronger  than  others ; 
and  this  evidence  of  inequality  extends  to  everything  con- 
nected with  their  physical  nature  or  surroundings, — to  their 
physical  brain,  memory,  energy,  and  to  the  position,  in- 
fluence or  wealth  that  these  give  them.  When  we  refer  to 
equality,  we  refer  to  a  result  not  of  body  or  form,  but  of  mind 
or  spirit, — to  that  which  is  meant  when  it  is  said,  sometimes, 
that  "all  men  are  equal  in  the  sight  of  God,"  and  which  is 
aptly  described  in  the  American  "Declaration  of  Independ- 
ence" as  a  right  to  "life,  liberty,  and  the  pursuit  of  happi- 
ness,"— to  that  which  gives  a  man  a  consciousness  of  being 
free,  so  far  as  this  is  possible  without  interfering  with  others, 
to  obtain  what  he  desires. 

It  needs,  to  be  noticed  also — and,  it  is  in  accordance  with 
the  theories  of  this  book — that  what  gives  the  majority  of 
men  the  most  consciousness  of  happiness  is  that  which  en- 
ables them  to  fulfill  not  lower  and  physical,  but  higher  and 
mental  desire, — is  not  money,  but  such  things  as  friendship, 
love,  education,  social  recognition,  business  prominence, 
literary  achievement,  etc.    This  is  another  fact  ignored  by 


HAPPINESS  IN  FULFILLING  HIGHER  DESIRE        3°9 

those  whose  conceptions  of  equality  and  of  the  happiness 
brought  by  it  do  not  include  that  which  is  mental  and  spirit- 
ual. Of  course,  those  of  whom  this  can  be  affirmed  are  not 
always  aware  that  they  are  ignoring  the  mental  and  the 
spiritual.  Some  of  them  are  more  likely,  perhaps,  than 
many  other  people  to  claim  to  be  particularly  rational, 
humanitarian,  and  idealistic.  Their  theories,  they  say,  are 
founded,  in  an  exceptional  degree,  upon  a  recognition  of  the 
claims  of  human  brotherhood.  But  what  do  they  mean  by 
brotherhood?  If  their  conception  of  this  be  based  upon 
what  a  man  is  physically,  and  their  conception  of  its  benefits 
upon  what  can  be  done  to  improve  merely  his  physical  con- 
dition, they  need  to  be  reminded  that  there  is  no  physical 
brotherhood  except  among  those  who  have  the  same  physi- 
cal father  or  mother;  and  that  the  brotherhood  that  is  not 
physical  must  be  psychical  and  be  based  upon  a  union  of 
thought  and  purpose  brought  about  among  men  by  an 
endeavor  on  the  part  of  each  individual  to  prevent  the 
bodily  and  material  within  himself  from  outweighing  the 
mental  and  spiritual  which  connects  him  with  his  fellows 
(see  pages  20  and  21). 

Unfortunately,  this  psychical  conception  of  brotherhood 
is  not  the  conception  of  those  of  whom  we  have  been  speak- 
ing. To  them  the  chief  evils  from  which  a  man  suffers  seem  to 
be  due  to  his  not  possessing  enough  of  that  which  ministers 
to  physical  and  material  desire.  Often,  indeed,  these  people 
attribute  such  evils  solely  to  the  fact  that  the  man  has  not 
enough  money.  They  very  naturally,  therefore,  draw  the 
conclusion  that  the  right  remedy  for  his  troubles  is,  so  far 
as  possible,  to  take  the  money  of  the  country  away  from 
individuals  who,  as  a  rule,  have  earned  it  through  hard 
work  and  saved  it  through  self-denial,  and  distribute  it,  or 
the  control  of  it,  in  equal  shares  among  the  whole  populace 
without  regard  to  the  diligence  with  which  any  one  has 
labored  or  the  conscientiousness  with  which  he  has  econo- 
mized,— in  other  words,  without  regard  to  the  way  in  which 
anyone  has  fulfilled  or  not  fulfilled  the  promptings  of  higher 
rational  desire.  There  are  three  different  methods  through 
which  three  different  classes  of  theorists  suppose  that  this 
result  can  be  attained, — through  communism,  through 
socialism,  and  through  anarchism;  and  there  are  reasons 
founded  on  a  knowledge  of  human  nature  why  many 
thinkers  believe  that  each  of  the  three  is  essentially  inimical 


310  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

to  civilization.  Communism  seeks  to  abolish  individual 
ownership, — as  applied  always  to  one's  own  business,  prop- 
erty, and  home,  and,  sometimes,  as  applied  to  his  wife  and 
children.  In  its  extreme  and  exclusive  form,  it  is  too  im- 
practical to  find  many  advocates,  and  needs  to  be  considered 
here  so  far  only  as  it  may  be  connected,  as  it  is  in  some 
minds,  with  socialism.  This  system  seeks  to  abolish  in- 
dividual management,  and,  sometimes,  also  ownership, 
though  only  indirectly  and  so  far  as  this  interferes  with 
management.  The  avowed  purpose  of  the  system  is  to 
socialize  industry, — to  put  public  utilities,  like  railways, 
telegraphs,  etc.,  under  government  control,  and  even 
private  enterprise,  sometimes,  under  the  control  of  the 
laborers  who  further  its  achievement.  Anarchy  is  the 
opposite  of  socialism,  it  would,  if  possible,  abolish  both 
management  and  government  so  far  as  either  is  authorized 
or  organized,  the  conception  being  that  all  community  ills 
are  due  to  the  government's  concerning  itself  about  in- 
dividual ills, — as  in  what  men  term  social,  political,  and 
industrial  rights;  and  that  matters  of  this  sort  and  the  evils 
connected  with  them  will  adjust  themselves  through  apply- 
ing what  the  reader  of  this  book  will  understand  to  be 
meant  when  it  is  termed  the  merely  physical  and  material 
remedy  of  abolishing  government. 

It  certainly  seems  as  if  a  little  foresight  joined  with  a 
little  knowledge  of  human  nature  ought  to  make  one  recog- 
nize that  none  of  these  systems  could  secure  the  ends 
sought  by  their  advocates.  The  motto  of  the  socialists  is 
"From  each  according  to  his  ability,  to  each  according  to 
his  need."  This  is  admirable  when  supposed  to  express  the 
principle  in  accordance  with  which  the  individual  should 
deal  with  the  community;  but  it  is  the  opposite  when 
supposed  to  express  the  principle  in  accordance  with  which 
the  community  should  deal  with  the  individual.  The 
logical  inference  of  the  latter  from  the  statement  "to  each 
according  to  his  need"  is  that  the  more  that  one  can  show 
that  he  needs,  the  more  he  can  get  or  deserve  to  get.  How, 
from  this  conception,  could  one  derive  any  stimulus  to 
work?  And  how,  where  there  were  no  stimulus  of  this  sort 
could  a  man  disinclined  to  work  be  induced  to  work  ?  If,  in  a 
community  ruled  by  socialistic  methods,  there  were  any 
considerable  number  of  men  who  were  incorrigibly  lazy — 
in  other  words  men  in  whom  rational  and  altruistic  desire 


SOCIALISM  AND  A NARCHISM  3 1 1 

had  not  overcome  bodily  and  physical  desire  sufficiently 
to  make  them  willing  to  do  their  share  of  the  labor  neces- 
sary in  order  to  promote  and  continue  the  general  welfare, 
what  would  happen?  What  but  this? — that  the  agencies 
of  civilization  would  cease  to  function?  Sufficient  coal 
would  not  be  mined,  sufficient  grain  would  not  be  sown  or 
harvested,  sufficient  supplies  of  other  kinds  would  not  be 
provided  or  transported,  to  keep  the  people  as  a  whole  from 
freezing,  starving,  and  dying.  Then  what  would  happen? 
Then  the  men  whose  higher  desires  had  not  been  so  in- 
fluenced psychically  in  home,  school,  church,  or  society  as  to 
recognize  their  rational  and  humane  obligations  to  others 
would  have  to  be  compelled  to  work.  Society,  in  its  own  self- 
defence,  would  be  obliged  to  make  them  do  this,  and,  in  such 
circumstances,  how  could  there  continue  to  be  any  socialistic 
management  on  the  part  of  the  workers  themselves? 

The  only  conclusion  that  seems  natural  and  logical  is  that 
the  condition  would  soon  develop  slaves  on  the  one  hand, 
and  tyrannical  slave  drivers  on  the  other. 

Anarchism,  on  the  contrary,  would  bring  plenty  of  oppor- 
tunities to  develop  individual  initiative  and  stimulus;  but 
these  would  tend  chiefly  toward  the  fulfillment  of  egoistic 
desires.  The  conception  expressed  in  the  phrase  ''every 
man  for  himself"  could  not  prove  a  success  except  so  far  as 
non-selfish,  rational,  and  altruistic  desires  in  men  had  come 
to  outweigh  their  bodily  and  selfish  desires.  When  this 
had  been  done,  such  psychical  conditions  would  prevail  as 
would  necessarily  involve  concessions  to  one's  fellows  and 
would  demand  a  community  of  action  with  them  which  of 
itself  would  constitute  the  beginning,  and  lead  to  the  con- 
summation, of  the  most  of  that  which  is  meant  by  govern- 
ment. Otherwise,  where  only  physical  desires  were  in 
control  of  men  and  there  were  no  external  government  to 
restrain  them  from  opposing  one  another,  individuals  would 
have  to  protect  themselves  against  interference,  and  the 
strong  would  soon  learn  that  the  most  effective  way  of 
doing  this  would  be  by  putting  an  end  to  the  lives  of  their 
opponents.  Just  as  socialism  seems  to  lead  logically  to 
slavery,  anarchism  seems  to  lead  to  slaughter;  and  one 
would  not  go  far  astray,  were  he  to  attribute  one,  at  least, 
of  the  underlying  reasons  for  each  result  to  the  fatal  mistake, 
when  forming  plans  for  the  betterment  of  human  condi- 
tions, of  supposing  the  comfort  of  the  physical  body  to  be  the 


312  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

object  of  first  importance,  and  the  fulfillment  of  physical 
desire  the  attainment  of  chief  consideration. 

According  to  the  philosophy  of  Herbert  Spencer,  as  un- 
folded in  Chapter  XXIII.  of  his  First  Principles,  the  results 
of  development  which  he  applied  to  all  the  physical  phe- 
nomena of  nature  include  two  different  processes, — one 
of  growth  and  the  other  of  decay.  After  a  time — of  aeons 
of  time  in  some  cases — the  crude  elements  which  gradu- 
ally acquire  greater  concentration,  completeness,  beauty, 
and  fruitfulness  begin  to  develop  the  sources  of  their  own 
destruction.  Dissolution  sets  in,  and,  finally,  everything 
resolves  itself  once  more  into  its  elementary  conditions. 
In  the  early  stages  only,  does  progress  indicate  improve- 
ment. In  the  latter  it  indicates  deterioration.  This  is 
exactly  what  a  number  of  thoughtful  minds  recognize  to 
be  indicated  by  many  of  the  movements  that,  in  our  own 
age,  have  been  termed  progressive.  Instead,  for  instance, 
of  improving  that  form  of  democracy  in  which  most  of  our 
countrymen  believe,  they  have  merely  revealed  the  fact  that 
this  form  carries  with  it  the  seeds  of  its  own  decay,  and  is 
hastening  the  time  when,  out  of  its  once  inspiring  possibilities 
it  shall  reinstate  some  of  the  worst  effects  of  despotism. 

Notice,  however,  that  according  to  what  was  said  on 
pages  98  and  99  this  process  of  deterioration,  so  far  as 
there  is  any  justification  for  Spencer's  theory,  applies  to 
only  physical  development.  In  other  words,  the  process 
applies  only  to  those  methods  of  so-called  reform  that  are 
the  outgrowths  of  endeavors  to  do  no  more  than  change 
merely  physical  conditions, — to  do  no  more  than  can  be 
done  by  such  methods,  to  be  specific,  as  are  ascribed  in  the 
preceding  paragraph  to  communism,  socialism,  and  anarch- 
ism. Only  so  far  as  the  methods  used  have  a  psychical 
aim  and  are  influenced  not  so  much  to  acquiescence  in 
physical  desires  as  to  resistance  of  them  with  the  intent  of 
subordinating  their  deteriorating  tendencies,  can  the  mental 
energies  of  men  be  expected  to  turn  these  tendencies  into 
agencies  working  for  human  advancement.  This  is  to  say 
that  the  only  possibility  of  preventing  deteriorative  mate- 
rial changes  from  overcoming  spiritual  progress  lies  in  the 
recognition,  which  always  takes  place  first  in  the  individual 
consciousness,  of  the  allegiance  which  one  owes  to  mental — 
in  the  sense  of  rational ,  humane,  and  unselfish — desire.  This 
allegiance  involves  a  fulfillment  of  obligation  both  to  oneself 


LOYALTY  TO  PSYCHICAL  REQUIREMENTS  313 

and  to  others.  As  regards  himself,  a  man  must  often — in 
fact,  invariably,  as  a  habit — deny  and  sometimes  sacrifice 
his  own  lower  desires,  in  order  to  prevent  them  from  out- 
weighing the  higher.  As  regards  other  people,  a  man  must 
often  deny  and  sometimes  sacrifice  the  expression  of  even 
his  own  mental  desires  in  case  he  perceives  clearly  that  the 
learning,  experience,  and  ability  of  others  give  them  the 
right  to  be  supposed  to  have  an  ideal  that  is  higher  in 
mental  and  rational  quality  than  his  own.  This  inference 
follows  upon  what  was  said  on  page  6  to  the  effect  that 
mental  desires  differ  in  quality,  some  being  more  nearly 
unadulterated  and  entirely  mental  than  are  others.  Just  as 
in  times  of  conflict  or  war  between  nations  men  feel  under 
peculiar  obligations  to  be  loyal  to  the  ruler  of  their  own 
country,  even  though  they  may  not  have  complete  con- 
fidence in  his  judgment,  so  in  times  of  conflict  of  any  kind 
that  requires  mental  efficiency  one  often  feels  under  peculiar 
obligations  to  be  loyal  to  some  mental  leader.  This  latter 
is  a  form  of  loyalty  to  psychical  requirements  the  demands 
and  limits  of  which — as  of  everything  that  must  be  deter- 
mined by  thinking — are  not  easy  to  define;  but  it  involves, 
now  and  then,  especially  when  one  is  face  to  face  with  those 
who,  for  any  reason,  may  be  presumed  to  have  a  right  to 
mental  authority,  a  subordination  of  that  which  seems  most 
rational,  non-selfish,  and  humane  in  oneself  to  that  which 
seems  to  indicate  still  more  of  these  qualities  in  the  character 
of  another. 

The  conclusion  reached  here  corresponds  very  closely  to 
that  of  religion  of  every  true  kind — a  conclusion  that  has 
often  caused  it  to  be  reviled  by  professed  unbelievers. 
These  revile  it  on  the  ground  that  it  tries  to  cause  men  to  be 
satisfied  with  the  conditions  in  which  they  find  themselves. 
But  this  is  not  true.  It  tries  to  cause  them  to  accept  these 
conditions,  and  then  to  make  the  best  of  them.  If,  while 
striving  to  do  this,  they  fail,  owing  to  the  actions  of  others, 
or  to  their  own  lack  of  ability,  to  secure  everything  for  which 
they  had  hoped,  they  certainly  will  not  fail  to  secure  the  re- 
sults of  the  kind  of  discipline  for  which  all  life  is  chiefly 
worth  while, — that  of  the  mental  and  spiritual  nature,  which 
must  often  be  obtained  through  the  exercise  of  self-denial 
and  self-sacrifice.  According  to  this  view  of  the  subject,  it 
is  difficult  to  perceive  how  the  man  always  placed  where  cir- 
cumstances of  inheritance  or  ability  keep  him  at  the  top  of 


314  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

the  social  organism  is  much  more  favored  than  the  one  who  is 
kept  at  the  bottom.  This  is  the  teaching  of  religion;  but  it 
is  well  to  notice  also  that,  as  in  the  case  of  everything  that 
is  religiously  true,  it  is  at  the  same  time  the  teaching  of 
philosophy. 


CHAPTER  XXIII 

KEEPING  THE   MIND'S  DESIRES   UPPERMOST   IN    STIMULATION 

BY   THE   GOVERNMENT  OF   INDIVIDUAL   INITIATIVE   AND 

LEADERSHIP 

The  Duty  of  Government  to  Afford  Men  Opportunities  to  Give  Ex- 
pression to  the  Desires  of  the  Mind — Application  of  this  Principle 
to  Levying  Taxes — Developing  Enterprise — Granting  of  Patents, 
Copyrights,  and  Franchises — To  Rights  Obtained  by  Purchase  or 
Inheritance — Physical  and  Mental  Desires  for  One's  Heirs — Con- 
tributions to  Art,  Science,  and  Life  by  the  Inheritors  of  a  Small 
Competence — Demoralizing  Effects  upon  a  Country  of  Thinkers 
who  Work  only  for  Pay — Menace  to  Public  Welfare  of  those  In- 
heriting Great  Wealth — The  Law  against  Entail — Concerning  the 
Principle  Underlying  a  Graded  Inheritance  Tax — Good  Govern- 
ment Secures  for  Each  Individual  Liberty  to  Think  and  to  Act 
without  Undue  Interference — To  Governments  of  this  Kind,  most 
Modern  Progress  is  Attributable — Also  Moral,  as  well  as  Mental 
Development — Different  Lessons  Drawn  from  Certain  Occurrences 
Connected  with  the  Recent  War — Democracy  as  a  Remedy  for  the 
Causes  of  the  War — A  League  or  External  Organization  of  Demo- 
cratic Nations  to  Enforce  Peace — A  Practical  Ethical  Inference  that 
can  Fit  either  the  Possibility  or  the  Impossibility  of  Realizing,  at 
Present,  the  Ideals  Underlying  such  Methods — Conclusion. 

IN  view  of  what  has  been  said  of  the  importance  to  the 
community  of  men  of  exceptional  intelligence,  and 
efficiency,  that  method  of  government  seems  wisest 
which  interferes  the  least  with  the  influence  and  the  means 
of  influence  which  have  been  obtained  by  a  man  as  the 
natural  and  legitimate  result  of  his  own  ability  and  industry. 
Honestly  and  humanely  exercised,  these  traits  invariably 
indicate  mental  superiority;  and  those  who  acknowledge 
and  accept  this  in  another  merely  manifest  in  their  relations 
with  him  their  own  desire  to  prevent  the  physical  from  out- 
weighing the  mental.  Any  action  of  government  that  tends 
to  discredit  or  displace  him  for  no  other  reason  than  be- 
cause he  has  been  successful,  would  often  be  as  detrimental 

3i5 


316  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

to  the  interests  of  the  public  as  in  the  middle  of  a  great  war 
to  act  in  the  same  way  for  a  similar  reason  toward  a  great 
military  commander.  It  seems  to  be  the  plain  duty  of  the 
government  to  afford  such  a  man,  so  far  as  it  is  compatible 
with  the  general  welfare,  every  opportunity  for  stimulus 
and  development.  These  are  never  afforded  where  official 
force  is  used  to  repress  energy  that  is  unofficial.  Few 
heads  will  be  tempted  to  emerge  from  the  common  level  of 
humanity  where  it  is  known  beforehand  that  their  only  wel- 
come will  be  a  club.  In  effect  this  is  exactly  what  follows 
upon  laws  that  discourage  success,  and  lessen  inducements  to 
enterprise.  Everyone  knows,  or  ought  to  know,  that  those 
who  contribute  time,  energy,  or  money  to  new  undertakings 
do  so  often  at  great  risk.  Many  mercantile  and  manufac- 
turing industries  do  not  pay  expenses  for  years  after  they 
have  been  started,  and  some  never  pay  them.  Few  original 
stockholders  of  any  of  our  railways  do  not  lose  most  of  the 
money  that  they  put  into  them.  When  the  first  railway 
between  the  Atlantic  and  Pacific  oceans  was  begun,  hardly 
anyone  aside  from  its  promoters  believed  that  it  could  be 
completed;  and  no  one  even  of  them  knew  whether  it  could 
be  made  self-supporting.  It  is  to  the  persistent  faith  and 
foresight  of  men  who  are  not  deterred  by  hazards  like  these 
that  our  country  owes  its  great  commercial  and  industrial 
development.  After  shops  and  factories  became  crowded 
with  customers,  after  farms,  mining  camps,  and  cities  came 
to  occupy  what  was  once  termed  "the  Great  American 
Desert,"  values  increased  enormously,  and  great  wealth  came 
to  some  of  those  to  whom  these  developments  were  due. 
But  was  this  wealth  undeserved?  No  matter  how  selfishly 
those  who  earned  it  may  have  wrought — but  this  was  true 
of  few  because  the  most  of  them  had  been  exceedingly  faith- 
ful to  an  ideal — the  wealth  of  any  one  of  them  could  form 
only  an  infinitesimal  part  of  that  which  had  been  divided 
among  thousands  of  others. 

The  same  principle  applies  in  all  cases.  There  is  always 
need  of  enterprise.  A  government  is  unwise  whose  laws 
discourage  this.  Scarcely  anything  checks  initiative  more 
effectively  than  to  penalize  by  an  extra  tax,  or  to  prohibit  by 
confiscation,  dividends  in  excess  of  an  ordinary  percentage. 
These  dividends  are  not  always  unmerited.  They  are  often 
merely  just.  A  large  percentage  of  gain  for  a  few  years 
seems  needed  in  order  to  make  up  for  the  loss  of  income 


GOVERNMENT  ENCOURAGEMENT  OF  ENTERPRISE  317 

in  the  past,  at  the  time  when  the  enterprise  started,  and  that 
which  still  threatens  loss  in  the  future  in  case  there  come 
business  depression.  Nor  is  there  always  justice  in  laws 
proportioning  dividends  to  such  as  afford  a  fair  percent- 
age upon  the  cost  of  an  industry  when  first  established. 
A  railway  that  has  surrounded  itself  with  cities  where  once 
there  was  only  a  desert  has  made  itself  of  much  more  value 
than  it  possessed  on  the  day  after  it  had  been  constructed. 
The  builders  of  it  have  a  right  to  claim  a  percentage  on  the 
value  that  they  have  created. 

This  last  sentence  suggests  that  it  is  important  to  bear  in 
mind  that  it  is  not  property- value  alone  that  is  increased 
as  the  result  of  leaving  individual  energy  as  unhampered  as 
feasible  by  government  action.  Still  more  important,  per- 
haps, is  the  influence  of  this  course  in  enabling  men  of 
ability  to  open  for  those  who  have  not  yet  begun  to  accu- 
mulate property  the  door  of  opportunity  for  continued  and 
lucrative  employment.  The  world  needs  conditions  that 
shall  not  only  impel  enterprising  men  to  work,  but  shall 
place  them  in  a  position  where,  through  exerting  legitimate 
financial  and  industrial  influence,  they  can  induce  other  peo- 
ple to  work.  The  masses  need  leaders,  and  no  way  of  deter- 
mining who  their  leaders  shall  be  has  yet  been  discovered 
equal  to  that  furnished  by  conditions  where  opportunities 
are  given  for  subordinates  to  work  their  own  way  up  from  the 
lower  ranks  to  the  higher.  When  those  who  do  this  reach 
the  highest  rank,  they  know  what  needs  to  be  done,  and  are 
usually  prepared  to  treat  with  sympathy  and  justice  any 
men  circumstanced  exactly  as  they  themselves  were  in  the 
past.  When  this  is  the  case,  the  more  wealth  and  influence 
they  possess,  the  better  it  is  for  the  community. 

In  view  of  these  facts,  it  is  evident  that  there  are  many 
directions  in  which  it  is  in  the  power  of  the  government  to 
benefit  the  community  through  encouraging  and  increas- 
ing individual  initiative  and  energy.  This  may  be  done 
by  means  of  a  patent,  issued  by  the  government,  which  al- 
lows a  man,  or  those  to  whom  he  delegates  his  authority, 
the  sole  right  to  manufacture  an  article  which  he  has  in- 
vented ;  or  to  a  copyright  which  allows  a  similar  privilege 
to  one  who  is  the  author  of  a  book  or  a  drama;  or  to  a 
franchise  which  allows  an  exclusive  possession  of  property  or 
exercise  of  business  in  a  certain  place,  as  in  laying  and  using 
the  tracks  of  a  tramway  or  railway.     In  these  and  other 


318  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

similar  ways  a  government  acts  wisely  in  making  it  worth 
while  for  inventors,  authors,  corporations,  or  promoters  to 
spend  time,  energy,  and  money  in  providing  for  that  which 
shall  add  to  the  comfort,  the  instruction,  the  enjoyment, 
and  the  prosperity  of  the  people  as  a  whole.  In  some  cases, 
it  is  right,  too,  that  the  privilege  granted  in  this  way  should 
not  be  perpetual;  but,  if  not,  the  limitation  should  be  clearly 
announced  when  the  privilege  is  given. 

Similar  principles  apply  to  rights  obtained  either  by  pur- 
chase or  by  inheritance.  That  which,  before  a  copyright, 
patent,  or  franchise  expires,  is  paid  for  purchase,  is  a  part  of 
the  reward  received  by  the  author,  inventor,  or  promoter, 
and  often  it  could  not  be  received  at  all,  if  the  privileges  that 
the  government  had  given  one  could  not  be  transferred — 
but,  of  course,  under  the  limitations  prescribed  by  law — to 
another.  It  is  the  same  with  inheritance.  Fully  half  of  the 
inspiration  that  underlies  the  persistent  efforts  of  success- 
ful men  comes  from  the  expectation  of  transmitting  their 
gains  to  their  children.  Only  a  bachelor  usually  retires  in 
the  prime  of  life  on  an  annuity.  That  which  prompts  par- 
ents who  are  responsible  for  bringing  a  child  into  the  world 
to  seek  to  provide  for  his  future  comfort  and  welfare  is  one  of 
the  noblest  instincts  of  nature;  and  the  laws  of  government 
should  recognize  this  fact. 

Of  course,  there  are  certain  people  who  carry  what  they 
consider  their  devotion  to  the  interests  of  their  children  or 
descendants  too  far.  They  want  to  found  a  family,  as  it  is 
called,  entailing  upon  their  heirs,  and  sometimes  upon  only 
one  of  them,  to  the  impoverishment  of  the  remainder,  all  the 
financial  privileges  that  they  themselves  enjoy.  To  judge 
by  the  practical  effects  of  their  theories  and  actions,  they 
seem  to  desire  chiefly  to  minister  to  the  vanity  of  their 
children,  to  justify  them  in  living  ostentatiously,  to  cause 
them  to  occupy  an  aristocratic  position  in  society,  or  to 
insure  them  commercial  or  political  prominence.  It  seems 
clear  that  the  fulfillment  of  purposes  of  this  kind  is  some- 
times detrimental  to  society  because  these  are  actuated  by  a 
desire  to  secure  success  for  oneself  or  others  through  that 
which  shall  enable  one  to  obtain  a  physical  advantage  over 
his  fellows.  There  are  many  people,  however,  and  a  much 
larger  number  of  them,  whose  desire  to  leave  money  to  their 
family  is  actuated  by  no  such  purpose.  What  they  want  is 
not  to  provide  their  children  with  the  means  of  luxury,  but 


BENEFIT  OF  INHERITED  WEALTH  3*9 

to  rid  them  of  being  obliged  to  spend  all  the  time  and  energy 
of  life  in  planning  to  supply  physical  necessities.  In  so  far 
as  this  is  their  desire,  it  is  evidently  mental. 

The  results  of  such  a  desire  on  the  part  of  parents  furnish 
one  of  the  most  inspiring  and  important  of  the  lessons  of 
history.  No  matter  into  what  sphere  of  endeavor  we  look, 
we  shall  find  that  the  great  majority  of  those  to  whom  the 
world  is  indebted  for  noteworthy  intellectual  and  spiritual 
achievements  have  been  brought  up  by  a  parent  who,  often 
at  the  expense  of  much  self-denial,  has  been  able  to  give  his 
children  an  education;  and,  now  and  then,  been  able  also 
to  leave  them  enough  to  provide  for  their  partial  support 
throughout  life.  This  partial  support  seems  sometimes 
needed  because  it  is  difficult  for  people  in  general  to  appre- 
ciate intellectual  and  spiritual  aims,  and  all  the  more  so  in- 
asmuch as,  frequently,  many  years  must  be  spent  in  youth 
not  in  productive  work,  but  merely  in  preparing  for  what 
may  be  produced  in  the  future.  A  poet,  a  painter,  an  his- 
torian, an  inventor,  a  scientist,  or  even  a  statesman  must 
often  go  through  a  long  apprenticeship.  Who  is  to  furnish 
him  with  food  and  lodging  while  he  is  doing  this  ?  At  this 
stage  in  his  career,  it  is  sometimes  impossible  for  him  to 
enter  employments  or  to  contend  for  prizes,  or  fellowships, 
which,  if  received,  might  support  him.  As  a  rule,  no  one, 
for  the  time  being,  can  attend  to  his  wants,  if  not  his  parents. 
Even  later  in  life,  many  a  man  of  undoubted  genius  fails  in 
his  efforts  to  cause  his  ability  to  be  recognized.  If  he  have 
no  money,  he  must  earn  it  by  labor  that  may  leave  him  no 
time  or  energy  for  the  kind  of  work  that  accords  with  his 
plans;  or  by  labor  that  may  oblige  him  to  change  the  charac- 
ter of  these  plans  in  order  to  conform  them  to  the  concep- 
tions of  those  upon  whom  he  is  dependent  for  his  support ; 
and  often  an  endeavor  to  do  this  may  cause  him  to  adopt  a 
course  which  may  and  should  result  in  making  his  career,  in 
every  important  sense  of  the  term,  a  failure. 

Probably  no  more  demoralizing  influences  have  ever 
been  exerted  in  the  history  of  thought  than  those  attending 
the  attempts  of  novelists,  dramatists,  artists,  and  political 
leaders  to  earn  a  livelihood  by  wholly  conforming  their 
message  for  the  people  to  some  popular  demand  or  taste. 
It  would  be  difficult  to  conceive  of  a  worse  form  of  prostitu- 
tion than  that  of  mind  or  soul  influenced  to  use  all  its  power 
of  thought  and  expression  for  the  purpose  of  earning  the 


320  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

price  which  a  constituency,  ignorant  of  truth,  beauty,  and 
wholesomeness,  or  hostile  to  them,  is  willing  to  pay  to  those 
who  will  ignore  or  misrepresent  them.  There  are  many 
other  lines  of  action  in  which  it  could  be  shown  that  people 
who  have  saved  for  themselves,  or  have  inherited  from 
others,  enough  money  to  enable  them  to  do  other  work  than 
that  needed  in  order  to  obtain  a  livelihood  are  of  great 
benefit  to  a  community.  To  say  no  more,  the  community 
needs  their  capital  for  its  factories,  shops,  and  railways,  and 
their  subscriptions  for  its  parks,  playgrounds,  schools, 
churches,  and  hospitals. 

At  the  same  time,  it  is  unfortunate  to  have  the  wealth  of 
a  country  accumulate  in  the  hands  of  too  few  individuals, 
especially  if  these  be  so  disposed  as  to  spend  it  solely  or 
mainly  for  their  own  benefit.  They  may  ''found  families" 
so  influential,  and  with  holdings  in  land  or  other  property  so 
extensive,  as  virtually  to  establish  a  system  of  aristocracy 
and  serfdom.  These  conditions  may  interfere  with  every 
interest  of  those  surrounding  them,  not  only  industrial  and 
commercial,  and  so  mainly  physical,  but  educational  and 
religious,  and  so  mainly  psychical.  Indeed,  the  same  argu- 
ment that  leads  one  to  conclude  that  it  is  wise  to  leave 
wealth  and  the  management  of  it  at  the  disposal  of  one  who 
has  proved  that  he  knows  how  to  use  it  to  the  advantage 
both  of  himself  and  of  others,  may  lead  one  to  conclude  that 
it  is  unwise  to  leave  it  wholly  at  the  disposal  of  a  man  who 
has  not  proved  this.  Certain  facts,  too,  might  be  cited  to 
confirm  this  conclusion.  Some  of  the  inheritors  of  great 
wealth  in  our  country  have  spent  it  so  as  to  injure  them- 
selves and  the  community  in  which  they  live.  They  have 
set  examples  and  developed  practices  apparentlv  actuated 
solely  by  an  aim  to  secure  the  gratification  of  physical  desire. 
Mental  desire  they  have  seemed  to  ignore.  For  the  satis- 
faction of  appetite,  they  have  substituted  indulgence;  for 
comfort,  luxury;  for  occupation,  pastime;  for  hospitality, 
ostentatious  extravagance;  and  for  pleasure,  demoralizing 
vice.  It  sometimes  seems  almost  essential,  in  order  to  keep 
civilization  from  destruction,  to  limit  the  amount  that  such 
people  inherit.  How  this  can  be  done  in  such  ways  as  not  to 
interfere  with  personal  liberty  of  action  and  the  stimulus 
derivable  from  it,  is  difficult  to  determine.  The  best  way — 
the  way  conforming  to  the  methods  suggested  as  applicable 
to  other  abuses  mentioned  in  this  book — would  be,  of  course, 


LAW  OF  ENTAIL  32 1 

through  the  exertion  of  some  psychical  influence.  At  differ- 
ent times  in  England,  the  father  of  a  family  who  appeared 
to  have  an  excess  of  money  has  been  induced  to  exchange  a 
large  part  of  it  for  a  hereditary  title  of  nobility.  An  analo- 
gous arrangement,  made  entirely  different  in  form  so  as  to 
accord  with  the  spirit  and  character  of  our  institutions, 
might  be  devised  by  some  ingenious  statesman  for  our  own 
country.  Or,  through  the  influence  of  the  press,  the  pulpit, 
or  other  social  or  religious  agencies,  there  might  be  created 
a  virtually  universal  public  sentiment  against  bequests  of 
large  personal  inheritances.  One  can  imagine  a  state  of 
popular  feeling  by  which  these  inheritances  would  be  so 
disapproved  that  any  man  who  wished  to  preserve  the 
respect  of  his  fellows  for  himself  or  his  family  would  resist 
the  temptation  to  go  against  the  feeling. 

There  are  those,  however,  who  think,  that,  in  the  direction 
that  has  been  indicated,  something  further  is  needed  than 
the  exertion  of  merely  moral  influence.  This  conception 
has  found  successful  expression  in  our  country  through  the 
abolishment  by  the  government  of  the  European  law  of 
entail.  In  accordance  with  this  law  an  entire  estate  was 
formerly  made  to  descend  to  one  member  of  the  family  who 
thus  became  a  great  aristocrat,  possessed  of  sufficient 
wealth  to  support  his  station.  In  countries  where  there  is 
no  such  law,  and  the  money,  in  case  there  be  no  will,  is  di- 
vided equally  among  the  children,  the  theory  is  that  these 
and  their  descendants,  as  they  multiply,  will  gradually 
divide  among  themselves  even  a  large  fortune  in  such  a  way 
that  no  one  of  them  will  possess  a  sufficient  amount  to  be  a 
menace  to  the  common  welfare. 

Another  method  that  has  been  applied  by  our  State  and 
Federal  governments  is  to  impose  upon  the  heirs  of  large 
estates  a  graded  inheritance  tax — a  levy  in  which  the  per- 
centage of  impost  is  made  larger  and  larger  in  the  degree 
in  which  the  amount  of  inheritance  is  increased.  The  objec- 
tion to  this  form  of  tax  is,  of  course,  mainly  in  its  tendency. 
If,  through  the  exercise  of  physical  force,  the  government 
can  take  away  a  part  of  one's  inheritance,  why,  through 
an  application  of  the  same  principle,  cannot  all  of  it  be 
taken  away?  The  only  agency  that  can  prevent  this  is 
an  influence  that  is  psychically  exerted  through  non-selfish 
and  altruistic  rationality.  But  why  cannot  this  form  of 
influence  be  exerted  directly  through  individuals  who  them- 


322  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

selves  are  prompted  by  higher  desire,  rather  than  indirectly 
through  government  which  is  a  physical  agency  sometimes 
representing,  but  sometimes  also,  owing  to  an  absence  of  a 
feeling  of  individual  responsibility,  misrepresenting  this 
desire?  In  the  former  case,  there  would  be  no  necessity  for 
physical  force,  nor  any  danger  that  the  exercise  of  it  on  the 
part  of  ignorant  officials  or  self-seeking  demagogues  might 
carry  the  principle  involved  too  far.  In  this  case,  because 
influenced  psychically,  those  who  had  accumulated  wealth 
might  be  led  to  expend  a  part  of  it,  before  dying,  upon  works 
of  benevolence  intended  to  benefit  all ;  and  the  heirs  of  these 
would  have  impressed  upon  their  minds  the  importance  and 
necessity,  in  order  to  continue  the  popularity  and  prosperity 
of  themselves  and  their  families,  of  entering  seriously  into 
the  work  of  the  world,  and  of  expecting  little  success  except 
as  a  result  of  their  own  thoughtful  industry.  It  is  simply  a 
fact  that  what  the  community  needs  most  as  applied  to  such 
evils  as  the  possession,  on  the  part  of  some,  of  too  great 
wealth,  is  a  more  deep  and  full  belief  in  the  influence  of 
higher  desire  working  up  and  through  rational,  non-selfish, 
and  humane  individual  action.  So  far  as  this  action  could 
be  influenced  through  the  agency  of  external  law  applied  to 
the  physical  conditions  involved,  this  law  would  prove 
beneficial;  but  so  far  as  the  action  could  not  be  so  influenced, 
the  law  might  prove,  in  the  long  run,  of  no  permanent  or 
universal  benefit  whatever. 

There  are  other  subjects  that  could  be  discussed  here  in 
this  connection,  but  those  that  have  been  mentioned  will 
suffice  to  illustrate  the  principle  involved  in  all  of  them. 
It  is  this, — that  government  was  made  for  man,  not  man 
for  government;  and,  therefore,  that  success  in  its  methods 
depends  upon  the  degree  in  which  it  leaves  each  individual 
subjected  to  it  free  to  think  and  to  act  without  undue  inter- 
ference. No  one  can  hold  in  place  the  springs  of  a  mechani- 
cal toy  and  expect  it  to  accomplish  that  for  which  it  was 
planned.  Much  less  can  success  attend  upon  efforts  de- 
signed to  influence  analogously  the  springs  of  energy  in  the 
mind.  In  circumstances  in  which  thought  needs  to  work 
independently,  such  a  course,  after  a  few  generations,  will 
be  almost  certain  to  bring  about  a  national  condition  such 
as  is  ascribed  to  some  of  the  countries  of  Asia  in  which 
spontaneous  methods  of  thinking  and  investigating  have 
been  supplanted  entirely  by  those  of  memory  and  tradition. 


POLITICAL  LIBERTY  AND  INVENTIVE  GENIUS      323 

As  a  fact,  it  would  not  be  difficult  to  show  that  almost  all 
of  the  great  discoveries  and  inventions  of  modern  times, — 
those  of  steam,  artificial  and  natural  gas,  electricity,  anaes- 
thetics, aseptic  surgery,  the  railway,  the  steamship,  the  iron 
ship,  the  sewing  machine,  the  reaping  machine,  the  thrashing 
machine,  the  farm  tractor,  the  printing  press,  the  linotype, 
the  wire  and  wireless  telegraph  and  telephone,  the  phono- 
graph, the  photograph,  the  moving  picture,  the  submarine, 
the  aeroplane — have  made  their  first  appearance  among 
people  whose  governments  have  left  them  comparatively 
free  to  develop  themselves  according  to  their  own  desires. 
Indeed,  neither  territorial  size  nor  military  strength  seems 
to  have  played  any  large  role  in  making  nations  intellec- 
tually prominent.  The  civil  liberty  to  which  this  latter 
prominence  has  been  attributable  has,  in  some  cases,  been 
occasioned  by  the  very  smallness  and  comparative  weak- 
ness of  the  state ;  and,  in  other  cases,  by  the  lack  of  power  in 
the  government  to  overcome  the  aggressive  independence 
of  the  citizen.  The  former  condition  prevailed  in  ancient 
Palestine  and  Greece,  and  in  comparatively  modern  times 
has  characterized  the  Italian  republics,  the  States  of  Ger- 
many preceding  their  union  into  an  empire,  and  Switzer- 
land, Denmark,  Norway,  Sweden,  and  the  Netherlands;  and 
the  latter  condition  has  for  many  years  been  more  or  less 
characteristic  of  France,  Great  Britain,  and  America. 

It  is  not  merely  in  the  directions  just  indicated,  that 
government  interference  may  retard  and  prevent  individual 
development.  The  same  effect  may  be  produced  in  educa- 
tional, literary,  artistic,  moral,  and  religious  directions. 
Influenced  by  such  interference,  all  agencies  of  thought  or 
expression  may  gradually  be  perverted  so  as  to  cultivate 
regard  and  admiration  for  physical  and  covetous  as  con- 
trasted with  rational  and  non -selfish  ideals.  The  very  streets 
and  parks  of  a  city  that  is  the  capital  of  a  government  given 
to  such  interference  come  to  be  rilled  with  public  monuments, 
some  of  them  almost  as  heavy  as  a  battleship  and  as  high 
as  a  church  steeple,  erected  to  men  who,  according  to  their 
own  confessions  and  the  acknowledgment  of  their  most 
loyal  biographers,  have  attained  their  ends  wholly  through 
physical  methods,  through  tramping  down  the  natural 
rights  of  others,  and  the  right  also  that  in  their  own  con- 
science is  trying  to  protest  against  duplicity,  injustice,  and 
bloodshed.     Where  this  is  the  case,  the  people,  no  matter 


324  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

how  exceptionally  well  educated  as  a  whole,  or  supplied 
with  leaders  distinguished  for  the  accuracy  and  breadth  of 
their  scholarship,  will,  all  of  them,  begin  to  have  a  tendency 
to  manifest  characteristics  different  in  form  but  the  same  in 
effect  as  those  do  who,  in  certain  ages  and  countries,  have 
been  treated  as  slaves,  and,  because  of  this  treatment,  are 
not  expected  to  be,  as  a  class,  truthful,  honest,  or  chaste. 
A  crippled  moral  development  furnishes  the  only  possible 
explanation  that  can  be  given  for  the  fact  that,  in  certain 
places  in  our  own  age,  in  times  of  war,  hardly  a  single  voice 
has  been  raised  against  the  wanton  destruction  of  vineyards, 
orchards,  houses,  towns,  churches,  libraries,  museums  filled 
with  works  of  art  and  hospitals  crowded  with  the  wounded, 
or  against  other  forms  of  injustice  and  cruelty, — not  the 
least  the  separation  and  deportation  of  thousands  from 
their  homes,  notwithstanding  the  certainty  that  many  of 
them  would  die  from  exposure  and  starvation.  These  are 
deeds  that  no  man  whose  conscience  was  not  perverted 
could  fail  to  consider  or  to  condemn  as  wrong.  We  need 
not  dispute  about  their  being  contrary  to  modern  interna- 
tional agreements  or  laws !  Two  thousand  years  ago,  Cicero, 
a  senator  of  Rome,  which  was  by  no  means  the  most  humane 
of  the  warring  nations  of  his  time,  gave  not  only  his  own 
opinion  but  the  opinion  of  his  countrymen  with  reference 
to  them.  Near  the  end  of  Book  First,  of  his  De  Officiis.  as 
translated  by  C.  R.  Edmonds,  he  declared,  after  discussing 
the  treatment  of  those  with  whom  a  nation  is  at  war,  that 
"some  things  are  partly  so  disgraceful  and  partly  so  crim- 
inal in  their  nature  that  a  wise  man  would  not  commit 
them  even  to  save  his  country  .  .  .  nor  would  his  country 
undertake  them  to  serve  herself." 

The  clear  inference  from  what  has  been  said  is  that  the 
one  thing  necessary  in  order  to  promote  moral  progress 
through  the  action  of  national  government  is  to  encourage 
legislation  that  shall  lessen  the  control  of  men  through  ex- 
ternal physical  force  and  increase  reliance  upon  their  own 
self-control  as  influenced  by  psychical,  non-selfish,  humane 
rationality.  In  the  opinion  of  many,  this  is  the  most  im- 
portant of  the  lessons  taught  the  world  through  the  agency 
of  the  late  war.  When  it  began,  the  officials  and  the  com- 
mon people  of  many  parts  of  Europe  were  at  one  in  believ- 
ing that  the  Americans  especially,  because  they  had  not 
been  trained  to  obey  the  authority  of  physical  force,  would 


POLITICAL  LIBERTY  AND  MORALITY  325 

not  fight,  if  individually  they  could  be  made  to  think  it  too 
dangerous;  that,  no  matter  what  the  provocation,  they  would 
never,  as  a  nation,  declare  war ;  would  never  enlist  for  service 
in  it;  would  never  subject  themselves  to  training  for  it; 
would  never  exercise  the  financial  and  personal  self-denial 
and  sacrifice  necessary  in  order  to  obtain  efficiency  in  it ;  and, 
if  they  succeeded  in  sending  to  Europe  a  limited  number  of 
troops,  that  these,  in  the  few  months  that  could  be  devoted 
to  the  purpose,  could  not  be  prepared  to  do  anything  except 
run  away  when  they  saw  the  enemy  approaching.  Noth- 
ing, probably,  ever  afforded  or  could  afford  greater  surprise 
to  the  latter  than  the  generosity  in  subscribing,  the  prompt- 
ness in  enlisting,  the  alertness  in  apprehending,  the  quick- 
ness in  learning,  and  the  efficiency  in  executing,  which,  when 
the  practical  test  came,  were  manifested  by  those  whom 
American  methods  had  trained  to  individual  initiative.  Very 
singularly,  however,  quite  a  number  in  our  own  country 
have  failed  to  recognize  the  real  significance  of  all  this. 
That  which  seems  chiefly  to  have  impressed  them  is  the 
fact  that  our  government,  as  a  war  measure,  felt  obliged  to 
oppose  the  physical  force  dominating  the  industrial  as  well 
as  military  conditions  of  our  enemies'  countries  by  an  exer- 
cise of  external  physical  force  similarly  directed  in  our  own 
land;  and  these  countrymen  of  ours  now  seem  to  think  that 
the  same  exercise  of  force  should  continue  after  the  coming 
of  peace.  This  is  not  a  theoretical  remark.  It  describes  an 
existing  condition.  It  indicates  a  danger  that  is  actually 
threatening  us.  It  represents  the  ideal  of  many  mistaken 
but  sincere  socialists,  and  of  others  who  are  not  socialists, 
but  are  influenced  by  them.  They  want  government  inter- 
ference in  almost  everything.  They  think  that  this  would 
secure  greater  efficiency.  Some  of  them  individually  are 
sure  that  they  themselves  could  carry  on  another  per- 
son's business  better  than  he  himself  can.  Very  likely, 
too,  they  are  right  in  this  supposition.  The  answer  to 
them  is  that  business  is  not  the  foremost  aim  of  life.  It 
is  individual  character;  and  no  men,  nor  set  of  men,  can 
afford  to  save  any  kind  of  business  at  the  expense  of  losing 
what  is  needed  for  the  highest  attainments  of  the  mind 
and  soul. 

Even  many  who  can  accept  as  true  a  statement  of  this 
kind  will  not  consider  it  particularly  related  to  any  lesson 
taught  through  the  agency  of  the  recent  war.     Because 


326  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

the  governments  that  started  it  were  exceptionally  devoted 
to  developing  the  interests  of  the  ruling  classes,  to  the  ex- 
clusion, if  deemed  necessary,  of  the  common  people  of  their 
own  or  of  other  countries,  many  have  come  to  attribute 
the  destruction,  misery,  and  death  that  ensued  solely — 
not  merely  mainly,  as  is  true — to  autocracy.  Their  rem- 
edy for  war,  therefore,  is  to  enforce,  as  applied  to  single 
nations,  democracy  of  government;  and,  as  applied  to 
many  nations  considered  together,  a  league  of  democratic 
governments. 

In  view  of  the  many  who  accept  these  conclusions,  it  may 
be  slightly  unpopular,  but  it  seems  to  be  necessary  in  the 
interest  of  truth  to  point  out  that  neither  of  these  remedies, 
much  good  as  they  might  do  in  certain  directions,  would 
necessarily  insure  the  stimulation  of  individual  initiative, 
whether  manifested  in  the  form  of  theoretic  opinion,  prac- 
tical enterprise,  or  personal  thoughtfulness,  truthfulness,  or 
humaneness.  The  conception  of  national  machinery  oper- 
ating through  physical  force  upon  the  mind,  as  if  it  were  a 
part  of  the  national  machine,  might  be  fully  preserved  in 
connection  with  both  of  them.  Democracy  does  not  neces- 
sarily change  this  conception.  Under  it,  as  under  an  auto- 
cracy, there  might  still  be  government  control  of  army, 
navy,  school,  church,  railway,  telegraph,  and  other  forms 
of  industry  and  business,  and  this  control  no  less  than  the 
same  in  an  autocracy  might  hamper  individual  initiative 
and  action.  Nor  would  the  removal  from  office  of  kings, 
nobles,  capitalists,  and  other  traditional  leaders  of  society 
lessen  to  the  extent  that  is  sometimes  supposed  other  public 
influences  detrimental  to  the  development  of  private  char- 
acter. The  mere  fact  that,  according  to  law,  our  country- 
men elect  their  own  rulers  has  not  prevented  the  occasional 
dictatorship  of  a  non-elected  political  or  industrial  boss 
successful  in  subordinating  the  interests  of  the  people  as  a 
whole  to  those  of  his  own  self-seeking  class.  Such  condi- 
tions prove  beyond  doubt  the  possibility  of  making  out  of 
democracy  merely  autocracy  turned  upside  down,  with  the 
community  ruled  from  the  bottom  of  society  instead  of  from 
the  top.  Inasmuch,  too,  as  usually,  owing  to  the  necessary 
conditions,  there  is  more  intelligence  and  wisdom  at  the 
top  than  at  the  bottom,  it  is  evident  that  this  form  of 
autocracy  might  be  the  most  tyrannical  conceivable. 

A  similar  statement  might  be  made  with  reference  to  a 


LIMITATIONS  OF  A  LEAGUE  OF  NATIONS  327 

league  of  democratic  nations  or  a  super-nation.  As  an  ideal 
toward  which  to  aim,  most  of  us  can  approve  of  Tennyson's 

Parliament  of  man,  the  federation  of  the  world. 

Locksley  Hall. 

And  yet,  for  the  present,  is  this  feasible?  An  International 
Court  with  power  to  enforce  its  decrees  might  be  so.  But 
a  legislative  parliament,  in  order  to  achieve  any  worthy 
purpose,  would  have  to  represent  people  who  had  a  worthy 
purpose, — in  other  words  represent  nations  whose  public 
sentiment,  giving  expression  to  the  private  faith  of  the  ma- 
jority of  their  citizens,  was  the  result  of  higher,  rational, 
non-selfish,  humane,  and  altruistic  desire.  If,  in  such  a  par- 
liament, representatives  of  nations  serving  higher  desires, 
met  with  representatives  of  nations  serving  lower  desires,  the 
former  nations,  unless  prevented  by  great  foresight  in  pre- 
a^rangements,  might  be  obliged  to  compromise  or  surren- 
der their  ideals,  together  with  all  the  benefits  to  the  world 
which  their  example  in  applying  these  ideals  to  govern- 
ment could  exert.  Otherwise,  there  might  be  conflict;  and 
in  case  of  conflict,  if  both  parties  were  pledged  to  enforce 
their  views,  it  is  difficult  to  understand  why  this  pledge  of 
itself  alone  might  not  bring  on  war.  This  is  the  same  as  to 
suggest  that  conditions  in  the  world  to-day  may  demand 
mainly  at  least  missionary  work  more  than,  or  rather  than, 
mandatory  work,  even  though  the  latter  be  the  result  of 
the  military  agency  of  the  most  perfectly  constructed  demo- 
cratic government  of  which  we  know.  Most  of  the  readers  of 
this  volume  will  probably  think  this  a  mere  hypothetical 
statement.  But  it  is  more  than  this.  It  is  legitimately 
inferred  from  historic  facts.  The  Roman  State  was  a  re- 
public when,  as  a  super-nation,  in  an  aim  which  was  vir- 
tually that  of  enforcing  peace  for  the  sake  of  forwarding  the 
interests  of  trade,  it  began  to  subordinate  all  other 
nations  to  its  own  rule.  The  Roman  Church  was  so  non- 
monarchial  that  the  humblest  peasant,  through  appoint- 
ment and  election, might  become  the  papal  ruler  of  the  world 
when  it,  too,  with  a  similar  aim — to  bring  a  universal  accep- 
tance of  him  whom  they  termed  the  Prince  of  Peace — began 
to  subordinate  these  nations.  No  thinker  can  find  any  good 
reason  to  doubt  the  non-selfish  enthusiasm  or  sincerity  of 
the  majority,  perhaps,  of  the  Roman  senators  or  prelates 
who  devised  these  methods.    But  they  failed,  because  they 


328  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

were  based  too  largely  upon  the  exercise  of  physical  and 
external  force;  because  of  faith  in  material  reconstruction 
irrespective  of  individual  spiritual  regeneration.  This  is  a 
mistake  which  people  of  this  age  ought  to  have  learned 
enough  to  avoid.  It  is  by  no  means  mainly  through  physical 
force,  whether  manifested  in  bayonets  or  ballots,  in  political, 
social,  or  ecclesiastical  organizations,  that  the  world  can  be 
most  permanently  benefited.  It  is  mainly  through  psychical 
influence,  exerted  upon  each  individual's  mental,  rational, 
non-selfish,  humane,  altruistic  desires.  What  other  con- 
clusion can  anyone  reach  who  is  thoughtfully  seeking  a 
philosophic  explanation  of  the  experiences  affecting  human 
life  in  this  world?  What  are  they  all  for,  so  far  as  they  can 
succeed  in  accomplishing  any  good  end?  What  can  they 
be  for  except,  through  the  instrumentality  of  higher  desire, 
to  develop  personal  character? 

Perhaps  the  ideals  of  these  old-time  leaders  and  of  their 
present  representatives  who  are  living  among  us  to-day 
can  be  realized  through  the  methods  that  seem  most  likely 
to  be  adopted.  Let  us  hope  that  such  will  be  the  case.  But, 
perhaps,  these  ideals  cannot  be  realized  thus.  It  is  even 
possible  that  they  never  through  any  methods  can  be  real- 
ized by  human  nature  as  it  is;  that,  if  they  could  be  so 
realized,  human  nature  itself  would  no  longer  be  needed 
in  order  to  carry  out  the  purposes  of  the  divine  economy. 
In  this  case,  perhaps  a  man  would  have  fully  attained  all 
the  discipline  and  development  which  the  conditions  of  life 
as  they  are  in  this  world  are  designed  to  give  him.  Such 
surmisals  with  reference  to  the  general  subject  are  sometimes 
suggested;  but  there  is  nothing  to  prove  or  disprove  either 
side  of  the  question.  One  thing  only  is  certain;  and,  for- 
tunately for  those  of  us  who  are  most  interested  in  seeking 
guidance,  it  is  also  practical.  This  is  that,  so  long  as  an 
individual  man  is  in  this  world,  he  possesses  a  conscience 
that  makes  him  conscious  of  an  obligation  to  fulfill  the 
promptings  of  mental,  rational,  non-selfish,  altruistic  desires 
whenever  he  is  also  conscious  of  lower  desires  opposing 
these;  and  also  of  an  obligation  to  use  all  his  influence,  so 
far  as  this  can  be  exerted  legitimately,  to  make  the  external 
domestic,  educational,  social,  industrial,  political,  and  reli- 
gious conditions  of  life  surrounding  him  such  as  shall  incite 
and  enable  all  his  fellows  to  fulfill  these  higher  promptings 
within  themselves. 


THE  CHARACTER  OF  THIS  DISCUSSION  W 

The  reader  of  this  volume  will  be  ready  now  to  bear 
witness  that  the  purpose  stated  in  its  opening  chapter, — 
to  draw  no  inference  and  to  advance  no  theory  not  war- 
ranted by  known  facts  as  ascertainable  in  connection  with 
the  operations  of  natural  law,  has  been  carried  out.  The 
author  finds  it  impossible,  however,  in  closing  this  dis- 
cussion, not  to  direct  attention  to  this  conclusion : — that  no 
philosophical  conception,  least  of  all  one  connected  with 
ethics,  can  be  held  solely  as  an  end  in  itself.  It  influences 
not  only  the  substance  of  thought  but  the  trend  of  thought, 
so  that  this  necessarily  pushes  on  especially  in  the  direction 
of  imagination  and  speculation.  Both  of  them  have  their 
functions  in  human  experience.  But  the  value  of  that  which 
they  bring  is  almost  entirely  determined  by  the  exactness 
and  comprehensiveness  of  the  thinking  which  formulated 
the  system  of  ideas  from  which  they  start.  This  system 
must  be  well  grounded  and  strongly  constructed  like  the 
observatory  from  which,  unless  it  be  free  from  vibration  or 
deviation,  the  astronomer  cannot  read  aright  the  message 
of  the  stars.  For  reasons  stated  in  the  Preface,  this  volume 
has  not  dealt  with  arguments  drawn  from  theories  or  specu- 
lations about  religion;  but  it  has  contained  a  great  deal 
that  is  fundamental  to  that  which  is  true  in  these.  It  might 
— possibly  it  should — have  gone  further  than  it  has  in  these 
directions.  Certainly  the  author,  in  his  own  mind,  has 
done  so.  Fifty  years  ago  he  had  already  allowed  his 
imagination  to  express  itself  in  this  way : 

'Tis  time  our  wandering  world's  philosophy 

Discern  life's  inward  bond  of  unity, 

Not  like  the  Greek  in  mere  material  fire, 

But  in  the  soul's  unquenchable  desire. 

'Tis  time  it  weigh  the  worth  of  arguments 

That  treat  each  consciousness  with  reverence; 

And,  starting  with  the  soul's  first  certainty, 

Evolve  in  all  its  ordered  symmetry, 

The  Universal  law  of  sympathy. 

'Tis  time  the  spirit  of  the  living  force, 

Whose  currents  through  the  frame  of  nature  course, 

And  make  the  earth  about,  and  stars  above, 

The  body  and  abode  of  infinite  Love 

That  breathes  its  own  breath  through  our  waiting  frames 

With  each  fresh  breeze  that  blows,  and  ever  aims 

Our  lesser  lives  where  all  we  call  advance 

But  plays  within  its  lap  of  circumstance, — 

'Tis  time  the  spirit  should  be  known  in  truth, 

Inspiring  hope  in  age,  and  faith  in  youth, 


330  ETHICS  AND  NATURAL  LAW 

And  in  us  all  that  charity  benign 
Which  in  us  all  would  make  us  all  divine. 

A  Life  in  Song:  Seeking,  LV. 

Even  that  which  should  chiefly  hinder,  in  our  own  age,  the  uni- 
versal acceptance  of  these  conceptions,  was  not  unforeseen: 

It  will  need  no  simple  proof  to  show  that  justice  due  to  each 
Never  can  be  gained  till  each  is  free  to  claim  his  due  in  speech; 
Or  that  kings  behind  their  armies  cannot  guard  the  rights  of  man 
Better  than  the  battling  masses,  butchered  for  them  in  the  van. 
It  will  need  no  nerveless  effort  to  reverse  that  cruel  mill, 
Where  the  wheels  that  run  the  ruling  grind  to  dust  the  people's  will. 

Idem:  Watching,  XXI. 

Nor  that  which  should  be  among  the  earliest  to  further  these 
conceptions: 

That  stalwart  Anglo-Saxon  sense  that  most 

In  Church  and  State  keeps  thought  and  action  free. 

Who  fears  a  progress,  charged  with  Freedom's  mission, 
That  gives  to  English  genius  broader  scope? 

Earth  fears  far  more  thy  foe,  whose  politician 

In  tearing  thy  flag  down  may  lower  the  whole  world's  hope. 

Idem:  Serving,  XLI. 

Nor  that  which  should  make  them  victorious: 

Where,  O  where,  shall  trust  in  truth  that  speaks  through  manhood  great 

and  small, 
Overcome  the  few's  oppression  by  intrusting  power  to  all? 


And  a  fresh  wind  rose  that  whispered,  "  Where  shall  man  to  man  be  true, 
In  the  old  world  old  ways  triumph:  Freedom  hies  to  seek  the  new." 


When  the  time  shall  come,  a  banner  by  the  right  shall  be  unfurled 
Where  the  patriots  of  the  nation  shall  be  patriots  of  the  world; 
And  the  right  shall  triumph  then! 

Idem:  Watching,  XXI,  XXII,  XX. 

So  much  to  suggest,  where,  in  accordance  with  the  limits 
prescribed  for  this  discussion,  nothing  further  is  feasible,  the 
practical  bearings  of  our  subject  upon  every  phase  not  only 
of  secular  but  of  religious  righteousness ;  and  not  only  in  the 
individual,  but  in  the  nation;  and  not  only  in  the  nation,  but 
in  the  world. 


INDEX 


Abelard,  75 

Abercrombie,  John,  65,  141 

^Esthetic  harmony,  and  ethical, 
146-154;  effects  experienced 
first  in  emotions,   149,   150 

Esthetics  and  ethics,  hedonic 
theory  of,  70-73;  physical  and 
psychical  effects  similarly  re- 
lated in  both,  29-34 

/Esthetics  Outlines  of,  Lotze,  70 

Age,  restlessness  of  the  present, 
270 

Agitator,  labor,  265 

Agriculturist,  34 

Alcohol,  drinking  of,  222-225 

Alexander,  S.,  98 

Altruism,  xii;  objection  to  exclu- 
sive, 120.     See  Non-selfish 

Ambrose,  75 

American,  initiative  in  the  late 
war,  324-326;  method  of  po- 
litical influence,  vii-x 

American  Magazine,  261 

Analogy  of  Religion,  Butler,  91,92 

Analysis,  lack  of,  in  ethical  theo- 
ries, xi,  xii,  45 

Analysis  of  the  Phenomena  of  the 
Human  Mind,  James  Mill,  96 

Anarchism,  its  nature  and  results, 
310-312 

Anatomical  testimony  concerning 
higher  and  lower  desires,  12-15 

Anger,  Seneca,  63 

Animals  distinguished  from  men, 
35-38 

Anselm,  75 

Antisthenes,  73 

Apostle  Paul,  31,  57 

Aquinas,  Thomas,  75 

Archimedes,  138 

Argument, influence  on  morals,  167 

Aristippus,  74 


Aristotle,  37,  72,  73,  75,  95,  100 

Army,  Salvation,  129 

Art,  as  related  to  culture,  235;  to 
morals,  169,  170,  234-239;  to 
nature,  235;  to  religion  and 
science,  29, 30;  to  truth,  238, 239 

Art  composition,  chart  of  methods 
of,  143 

Art  in  Theory,  Raymond,  29 

Asceticism,  102,  124-130 

Associates,  effects  of,  on  self-de- 
velopment, 210,  211 

Astrologers,  theory  of,  xvi 

Astronomer,  33 

Athens,  government  of,  271,  275, 
280 

Athletics  in  educational  insti- 
tutions, 201,  202,  263,  264 

Atwood,  H.  F.,  273,  279 

Augustine,  75 

Aurelius,  Marcus,  68,  74,  102 

Authoritative  character  of  con- 
science, 112 

Autocracy,  272,  273,  326 

Automobile  racing,  234 

Back    to    the    Republic,   Atwood, 

273,  279 
Bacon,  Francis,  Lord,  77-79 
Bain,  Alexander,  63,  96 
Balance,  physical,  137;  method  of 

acquiring,  140;  moral,  136-145; 

relation  to  harmony,  145 
Baldwin,  J.  M.,  49,  54,  70,  99 
Banquets,    ancient    and    modern, 

126,  127 
Bargainers,  dishonest,  243 
Bascom,  John,  90 
Beattie,  James,  65 
Beauty   as  related   to  harmony, 

145,  146 
Beecher,  H.  W.,  264 


35- 


332 


INDEX 


Belgium,  vi 

Benevolence,  as  the  source  and 

end  of  obligation,  xi,  93-95 
Bentham,  Jeremy,  66,  95,  97 
Bergson,  Henri,  34,  56 
Berkeley,  92 

Bernard  of  Clairvaux,  76 
Betting,  232-234 
Bixby,J.  T.,55,63 
Bodily  desire,  when  thought  more 

important  than  mental,  130 
Bonaventura,  76 
Bradley,  F.  H.,  53,  100 
Brentano,  91 

British  Government,  271, 273,  274 
British     Journal    of    Psychology, 

Brotherhood,  true  and  false  con- 
ceptions of,  308,  309 

Brown,  Justice  H.  B.,  186; 
Thomas,  65 

Bucke,  R.  M.,  14 

Buddhists,  xiv,  46 

Burns,  Robert,  58 

Business,  and  morals,  241-251; 
higher  and  lower  desires  in,  244; 
in  not  making  money  but 
effecting  exchange,  243,  244; 
laws  hampering  it,  301, 302, 316, 
317;  laws  regulating  it  and  justi- 
fiable, 294,  295;  liberty,  294- 
314;  National  House  of,  285 

Butler,  Joseph,  64,  90, 91,  92 

Buyers  and  sellers,  241-251 

Calderwood,  Henrv,  64,  89 

Cambridge  school  of  ethics,  81 

Capitalists,  care  for  laborers,  305  ; 

honor  due  them,  307;  influence 

on  public  and  workers,  304-307, 

316-318;  loyalty  in  recent  war, 

304,  305 

Carnegie,  Andrew,  259 

Carried,  B.,  98 

Categorical  imperative,  81 

Catholics,  xiv;  seven  capital  sins 
of,  134 

Cause  and  effect  between  physi- 
cal and  psychical,  in  ethics  and 
aesthetics,  29-33 

Centrifugal  force,  33 

Centripetal  force,  33, 

Chapin,  E.  H.,  264 

Character,  personal,  developed  by 


civil  and  industrial  liberty,  323- 
326 

Chastity,  214-217;  especially  re- 
quired in  women,  215,  216;  hon- 
ored by  men,  215;  its  own  re- 
ward, 216;  obligatory  upon  all, 
216;  taught  to  children,  191- 
193 

China,  ethics  of,  61,  62 

Choice,  effect  of,  upon  morality, 
40,  41,  153 

Christianity,  muscular,  129 

Christians,  xiv,  46;  of  fifteenth 
century,  109 

Christian  Science,  xiv,  10 1 

Chrysippus,  73 

Church,  institutional,  45,  46 

Cicero,  68,  74,  324 

Cigarettes,  220,  221 

Clarke,  Samuel,  65,  80,  91,  95 

Cleanliness,  in  children,  191- 193; 
mothers,  218 

Clothing,  226-228 

Coeducation,  203-205 

Collier,  Jeremy,  68 

Collins,  W.  L.,  68 

Combe,  George,  141 

Combinations   in   business,    302- 

304 

Commerce,  National  Chamber  of, 

285 
Commercial     relations     between 

men,  241-251 
Common  good  as  determining  the 

source  and  end  of  obligation,  73, 

94,95  . 

Communism,  its  nature  and  re- 
sults, 309-311 

Competition,  in  athletics,  201, 
202:  in  business  303,  304;  in 
school,  200,  201,  204 

Comte,  Auguste,  96 

Conduct  and  the  Supernatural, 
Thornton,  56 

Conflict,  between  higher  and  lower 
desires,  causing  depression  in 
youth,  152;  recognized  without 
realizing  its  philosophic  im- 
portance, 54-57 

Confucius,  45,  61 

Confucianists,  xiv 

Congress,  viii 

Conscience  xiii,  xiv,  9,  17;  a  con- 
sciousness of  conflict  between 


INDEX 


333 


Conscience — Continued 

higher  and  lower  desire,  37,  51- 
59,  m-122-  affecting  sense  of 
obligation,  55,  56;  Butler's  con- 
ception of,  92 ;  conception  of,  in 
this  book  covers  all  require- 
ments, 1 13-122;  conforms  to 
modern  thinking,  116;  consid- 
ered as  a  source  of  obligation, 
1 1 3-1 16;  considered  as  end  to 
which  obligation  is  directed, 
1 16-122;  definitions  of,  in  foot- 
notes, 63-67;  depression  caused 
in  youth  by  consciousness  of 
conflict  involved  in  it,  152; 
derivation  of  the  terms  applied 
to  it,  62,  63;  experienced  in  our 
feeling,  114;  fundamental  to 
character  in  children,  185-187; 
fundamental  to  religion,  186; 
has  supreme  importance  as  a 
guide  to  conduct,  113;  influence 
of  one's  conceptions  of  it  upon 
community  feeling,  1 19-12 1; 
intellection,  118,  119;  mental 
activity,  57-59,  117,  118,  224; 
moving  to  acceptance  of  life's 
limitations,  313,  314;  necessi- 
tating cooperation  on  the  part 
of  the  whole  mind,  57-59;  ob- 
served with  earliest  conscious- 
ness, 59;  perversions  of,  115; 
popular  use  of  the  term,  63, 
73;  termed  voice  of  God,  67- 
69,  90,  91;  why  authoritative, 
112;  wisdom  needed  in  applying 
its  promptings,  148 

Consciousness  of  conflict,  as  im- 
pelling to  right  action,  55-59 

Constitutional  republic,  274-280 

Constitution  of  the  United  States, 
vii,  274-280;  loyalty  to,  276 

Contracts,  213;  between  employ- 
ers and  employees,  261 

Conversion,  40-42 

Cooking,  220 

Cooperation  vs.  competition,  302- 
304 

Copyright,  318 

Corporations,  care  for  employees, 
245,  246,  305,  306 

Corson,  C.  R.,  66 

Courtship,  174-178 

Cousin,  V.,  92,  146 


Creative  Evolution,  Bergson,  34,  56 
Creed  of  Hobbes  Examined,    The, 

Tennyson,  80 
Crime,  publishing  details  of,  169 
Critique  af  Pure  Reason,  of  Prac- 
tical Reason,  and  of  Judgment, 
Kant,  80 
Cud  worth,  Ralph,  79 
Cutler,  Carroll,  67 
Curran,  John  Philpot,  279 
Cynic  School  of  Ethics,  73 
Cyrenaic  School  of  Ethics,  74 
Czar,  vi 

Dancing,  right  and  wrong  of,  231, 

232,237,238 
Darwin,  Charles,  xii,  63,  98,  116 
Darwin  and  the  Humanities,  J.  M. 

Baldwin,  99 
Data  of  Ethics,  Spencer,  66,  97 
Davis,  N.  K.,  64,  90 
Dawn  of  Day,  The,  Nietzsche,  87 

Day,H.  N.,66,93 

Decency  in  children,  191-193;  in 
others,  214 

Deference  to  others'  opinions,  209 

De  Jure  Belli  et  Pads,  Grotius,  78 

Demagogue,  272 

Democracy,  271-280;  no  certain 
preventive  of  war,  325-328; 
pure,  275 

Depression  of  the  immature  when 
first  recognizing  moral  respon- 
sibility, 152 

De  Rerum  Natura,  Lucretius,  74 

Descartes,  79 

Descent  of  Man,  The,  Darwin,  63, 
98, 116 

Desirable,  learning  of  the,  through 
experience  163-166;  through  in- 
formation, 166- 171;  through  ob- 
servation, 157-163 

Desires,  a  combination  of  the 
activity  of  feeling  and  thought, 
4-12,  39,  112,  131;  basis  of 
morality  in  them,  2-15,  17; 
bodily  alone  tend  to  egoistic 
and  brutal  self-indulgence,  men- 
tal to  altruistic,  rational  hu- 
maneness, 20-26,  119,  130, 131; 
bodily  unduly  emphasized,  130, 
131;  both  needed  for  human 
development,  28,  128-136;  both 
underlie  all   forms   of   psychic 


334 


INDEX 


Desires — Continued 

intelligence,  38,  39;  character 
and  conduct  as  due  to  bodily- 
alone,  24-26;  due  to  mental 
alone,  26-28 ;  confirmation  from 
anatomy  of  these  distinctions, 
12-15,  18-24;  constant  tend- 
ency to  antagonism  between 
bodily  and  mental,  16-34,  51- 
59;  effect  of,  on  a  man's  con- 
scious intelligence,  3,  4,  37-50; 
embodiment  of,  in  a  man,  2; 
end  and  quality  of,  closely  con- 
nected, 116;  energy  needed  to 
fulfill  mental,  117,  118, 161, 162, 
197,  198;  highest  human  de- 
velopment traceable  to  highest 
or  mental,  21-23;  influence  of, 
on  business,  244, 245 ;  on  conver- 
sion, 4 1 ;  on  education,  197-201 ; 
on  government  and  revolution, 
269,  270,  271;  on  temptation, 
43,  44;  one's  most  mental,  must 
sometimes  be  subordinated  to 
more  mental  in  another,  312- 
314;  overreaching,  133-136; 
physical,  origin  of,  12,  13;  pre- 
venting true  theories  from  being 
applied  to  practice,  45:  separa- 
tion between  higher  and  lower, 
sometimes  difficult,  23,  40,  124; 
supposing  bodily  and  mental  dif- 
ferently derived  and  developed 
is  not  unphilosophical,  29-34 

Despotism,  271,  273 

Destiny  and  fate,  footnote,  10 

Dewey,  John,  64,  97 

Diogenes,  73 

Divine  and  Moral  Government, 
McCosh,  92 

Divine  Love  and  Divine  Wisdom, 
Swedenborg,  82 

Divorce,  178-180 

Doctrine  of  Philosophic  Necessity 
Explained,  The,  Priestley,  79 

Drama,  truth  to  nature  in  the, 
238,  239 

Dressing,  relation  of,  to  attrac- 
tiveness, 228;  to  lower  and 
higher  desire,  228;  over,  228; 
under,  227 

Drill  in  school,  mistake  of  neg- 
lecting it,  198:  two  ends 
attained  by  it,  196,  197 


Drinking  and  morals,  220-225 
Duns  Scotus,  75 
Durkheim,  Emile,  89 
Duty,  Science  of,  Day,  66,  96 
Dymond,  Jonathan,  90 

Ecce  Homo,  Nietesche,  87 

Eckhart,  76 

Economy,  personal,  247 

Ecstasy,  divine,  experienced  by 
mystics,  75,  76 

Edmonds,  C.  R.,  74 

Education,  as  related  to  morality, 
194-205;  effect  of,  on  moral 
principles,  150-152,  166-171; 
its  methods  as  influenced  by 
higher  or  lower  desire,  197-201 ; 
should  be  made  interesting, 
not  easy,   199;  taxes  for  free, 

293 

Educational,    liberty,    293;    uni- 
versal, 293 
Edwards,  Jonathan,  93 
Effect,  material,  and  mental  cause 
as    related    in    aesthetics    and 
ethics,  29-33 
Efficiency  and  public  office,  294 
Effort  needed  to  fulfill  higher  but 
not  lower  desire,  117,  118,  161, 
wi62,  197,  198,  199 
Elan  Vital,  8. 
Elementary  Forms  of  Religious  Life, 

Durkheim,  98 
Elementology  of  Ethics,  Kant,  67 
Elements,  of  Ethics,  Davis,  64,  94; 
Hyslop,  64;  Muirhead,  66,  95, 
100;  of  Moral  and  Political  Phi- 
losophy,  Paley,  96:  of  Morality, 
Whewell,    66,    92:    of   Morals, 
Janet,    66;    of   Moral    Science, 
Porter,   81:   Wayland,   89,   95, 
182,  242,  243 
Elgin  National  Watch  Co.,  245 
Emancipation  of  slaves  in  United 

States,  287-289 
Emerson,  R.  W.f  134,  153 
Emotion  vs.  feeling,  3-8 
Emotional  theory  of  morals,  xi 
Emotional  intuitional  theory,  65, 

9i 

Emotions  and  Will,  Bain,  63 
Empiricism, 79 

Employees,  interest  in  work,  263- 
265;  loyalty  to  employer.  264. 


INDEX 


335 


Employees — Continued 
265;  relation  to  employer,  253, 
254,  263-265 

Employers,  relation  to  employees, 
252-266 

Energism,  8,  57,  117 

Enjoying  one's  work,  263-265 

Entail,  law  of,  321 

Enterprise  as  stimulated  by  gov- 
ernment laws,  316-318 

Environment,  influence  of,  on 
desire,  41,  157-163;  in  youth, 
172-174 

Epictetus,  74 

Epicureus,  74 

Epicureanism,  74,  75 

Equality,  human,  of  opportunity 
vs.  position,  308,  309 

Erigena,  Johannes  Scotus,  76 

Essay  on  the  Human  Under- 
standing, Locke,  64,  79 

Essays  on  the  Intellectual  Faculties 
and  Active  Powers,  Reid,  92 

Eternal  and  Immutable  Morality, 
The,  Cudworth,  79 

Ethica,  Spinosa,  79 

Ethical  harmony,  corresponding 
to  aesthetic,  146-154 

Ethical  theories,  ancient  and  mod- 
ern, 60-76;  similar  in  all  ages,  as 
also  the  differences  between 
them,  60 

Ethical,  like  aesthetic,  effects  often 
experienced  first  in  the  emo- 
tional nature,  114,  149,  150; 
knowledge  and  skill  connected 
with  them  increased  by  study, 
151,  152;  recognized  by  ordi- 
nary intelligence,  150 

Ethical  Studies,  F.  H.  Bradley,  100 

Ethical  Principles,  A  Study  of, 
Seth,  95,  100 

Ethics,  Aristotle,  72,  75,  100; 
Bascom,  90;  Dewey  and  Tufts, 
97;  and  Modern  Thought, 
Eucken,  56,  87;  and  Moral  Sci- 
ence, Levy-Bruhl,89;  Beginnings 
0/, Cutler ,  67 ;  Elements  of,  Davis, 
64,  94;  Hyslop,  64;  Muirhead, 
66,  95,  100;  Evolution  and,  Hux- 
ley, xii,  55,  98;  Hints  toward  a 
Theory  of,  Stork,  56;  Historical 
Introduction  to,  Moore,  68:  In- 
troduction to,  Murray,  66;  Thilly, 


98,  100,  142;  Introductory  Study 
of,  Fite,  46;  Manual  of,  Mac- 
kenzie, 94,  100;  Metaphysics  of, 
Kant,  65;  Methods  of,  Sidgwick, 
55.  96,1 00;  of  Evolution,  Bixby, 
55;  of  Nature  or  Custom,  Rous- 
seau, 66,  68;  Outline  of  a  Criti- 
cal Theory  of,  Dewey,  64;  Philo- 
sophical Introduction  to,  Gibson, 
100;  Principles  of,  Dymond.go; 
Problems  in,  Kedney,  93;  Pro- 
legomena of,  Green,  55,  74,  99, 
10 1 ;  Recent  Tendencies  in,  Sor- 
ley,  61 ;  Self- Realization,  an  Out- 
line of,  Wright,  57,  100;  System 
of,  Paulsen,  55-57,  67,  87,  94, 
107 

Eucken,  R.,  37,  56,  87 

Eudaimonian,  or  welfare  theory, 

„  45,  73,  92,  95-97,  "7,  "8,  139 

Eugenic    requirements    for    mar- 
riage, 172,  173 
Everett,  E.,  264 
Evolution  and  Ethics,  Huxley,  xii, 

^  55,  9.8 

Evolutionary  theory  and  morality, 

xii,  29-34;  reconciled  with  that 

of  this  volume,  29-34 
Evolutionism,  effect  of,  on  ethical 

theory,  32-34,  97-99 
Exchange,  the  basis  of  commerce, 

241-244,  249,  250 
Exertion  needed  to  follow  mental 

desire,  117,  118,  161,  162,  197, 

198 
Experience,  affecting  desires,  163- 

166;  influence  of,  in  ethics  and 

aesthetics,  42 
Experimentalism,  79 
Extortion  in  business  not  general, 

246 

Face  and  hands  expressive  of  higher 
thoughtful  nature,  226,  227 

Fairchild,  J.  H.,  93 

Fairness,  242 

Faith,  in  others,  its  effect  on 
character,  27;  especially  on 
children,  185,  186 

Family,  172-174,  178-181;  train- 
ing children  in,  182-193;  wor- 
ship in  187,  188.  See  Educa- 
tion, Instruction,  Information, 
Puritanism. 


336 


INDEX 


Farm,  community  life  in,  210,  211, 
306,  307 

Fate,  or  destiny,  source  of  concep- 
tion of,  10 

Faust,  43 

Fear,  exerting  mainly  physical 
influence,  25,  26,  190 

Feasting,  230,  231;  ancient  and 
modern,  127 

Feeling,  a  constituent  of  desire, 
7-9;  of  pleasure  and  pain,  sug- 
gesting, teaching,  and  develop- 
ing morality,  70-72,  95-99,  107- 
110 

First  Principles,  Spencer,  312 

Fite,W.,46 

Fitness  as  an  ethical  test,  95 

Fitzgerald,  P.  E.,  93 

Flechsig,  P.,  18-20 

Food  and  drink  as  related  to 
health  and  morals,  219-225 

Force,  physical,  26;  as  source  of 
morality,  vii,  viii;  its  effect  on 
character,  25,  26,  224,  225,  285- 
289;  used  to  influence  opinion, 
viii 

Foresight  in  business,  249 

Forgiveness  of  sins,  how  to  prac- 
tice it,  239,  240 

Form,  human,  as  expressive  of 
thought,  236 

Fortune  spent  to  benefit  others, 
230 

Franchise,  317,  318 

Frankness,  in  children,  191;  in 
others,  21 1-2 13,  242 

Freedom  of  press,  abuse  of,  169, 
170 

Free  love,  as  easy  divorce,  178; 
why  will  always  be  reprobated, 
214 

Functional  philosophers  of  Greece, 
72,  73 

Fundamental  principles,  impor- 
tance of  finding,  139,  140 

Gall,  F.  J.,  18 

Gambling,  232-234 

General  principles,  importance  of 

finding,  139,  140 
Genesis    of  Art-Form,    Raymond, 

142,  143 
George,  Henry,  242 
German  institutionism,  xi 


Germany,  v,  ix;  government  of, 

273,  274 
Gibson,  W.  R.  B.,  100 
Gilbert  and  Sullivan  opera,   238 
God,  His  voice  in  conscience,  67, 

90,  91;  in  majority  vote,  280, 

281 
Goethe,  43,  85,  153 
Gorgias,  74 
Government,   different  forms  of, 

270-276;    made   for    man,    not 

man  for  it,  322,  323 
Great   Britain,   form   of   govern- 
ment, 271,  273,  274 
Greatest  happiness,  ethical  theory, 

xi,  96,  139,  157 
Greece,  ethics  of,  61-63,  68-75 
Green,  T.  H.,  53,  55,  74,  99,  101 
Grotius,  Hugo,  78 
Guy  an,  M.,  98 

Haldane,  R.  D.,  82 

Hamilton,  E.  J.,  90;  SirW.,  7, 8, 11, 

63 

Handbook  of  Moral  Philosophy, 
Calderwood,  64,  89;  of  Psy- 
chology, Baldwin,  49,  54,  70 

Hands  and  face,  expressive  of  one's 
higher  thoughtful  nature,  226, 
227 

Happiness,  greatest  for  greatest 
number  theory,  xi,  95,  96,  139, 

157 

Harmony,  sesthetical,  141-153; 
ethical,  140-154;  of  character, 
xiii,  146;  preestablished,  32,  82; 
relation  to  beauty,  145,  146; 
result  of  arrangement,  142; 
serving  others  as  well  as  self, 

153,  154 

Hartley,  David,  79 

Hartley's  Theory  of  the  Human 
Mind,  Priestley,  79 

Hauptmann,  179 

Haven,  Joseph,  90 

Hayes,  R.  B.,  vii 

Hebrews,  xiv 

Hedonistic  ethical  theory,  xi,  45; 
narrowness  of,  7Q~73,  117;  ob- 
jections to,  70-75,  95-97 

Hegel,  G.  W.  F.,  84-87 

Heracleitus,  70,  72,  73 

Herbart,  91 

Heredity,  172,  173 


INDEX 


337 


Hickock,  L.  P.,  64,  89 

Hildreth,  R.,  93 

Hints  toward  a  Theory  of  Ethics, 
Stork,  56 

Historical  Introduction  to  Ethics, 
Moore,  68 

History  of  European  Morals, 
W.  E.  H.  Lecky,  75 

Hobbes,  Thomas,  64,  78 

Hoffding,  H.,  98 

Honesty,  characteristic  of  success- 
ful business  men,  244-248;  dis- 
covered to  be  best  policy  by 
practicing  it,  245 ;  importance  of 
it  in  character,  242 

Hope,  influence  of,  on  children 
and  others,  184,  185 

Hopkins,  Mark,  64,  93 

Howard,  G.  H.,  12 

Howell,  W.  H.,  18,  19 

Hubbell,  C.  B.,  220 

Hugo  of  St.  Victor,  76 

Human,  distinguished  from  ani- 
mal intelligence,  35-38 

Humane,  the,  a  characteristic  de- 
veloped from  mental  desire,  22, 
23,  38;  treatment  of  employees, 
253-261 

Human  Nature,  Hobbes,  64,  78 

Hume,  David,  79,  91 

Humility,  209 

Hutcheson,  Francis,  65,  91 

Huxley,  T.,  xii,  55,  98 

Hygiene,  sex,  taught  in  schools,  1 70 

Hyslop,  J.  H.,  64 

Ibsen,  influence  of,  85,  178,  179 

Idea,  what  it  is,  46 

Ideal,  what  it  is,  36,  46-50 

Ideality,  39,  47 

Idealism,  German,  84 

Imagination,  47,  49;  vs.  imitation, 

38,47 
Imitation,  47,  48;  vs.  imagination, 

38,47 
Immodesty  in  dress,  227,  228,  236- 

238 
Immoral  traits,  189,  190 
Imperative,  categorical  of  Kant, 

64,  65,  81 
India,  holy  men  of,  124,  125 
Individual  liberty,  316,  317 
Industrial  liberty,  257-261 
Information,     adding     to     moral 


enlightenment,  151,  152;  as 
affecting  and  affected  by  desires, 
166-171;  as  influencing  con- 
duct, 43,  44,  166-170;  not 
always  necessary  to  insure 
morality,  43,  44,  150,  151 

Inheritance,  benefits  of,  to  indi- 
viduals and  communities,  318- 
320;  evils  of,  320,  321 ;  rights  of, 
318-322;  tax,  and  objections  to, 
321,  322 

Initiative,  individual,  as  devel- 
oped by  civil  liberty,  323-326; 
by  government  laws,  250,  315- 
328;  as  suppressed  by  institu- 
tionism  and  socialism,  62,  295- 
317;  vs.  institutionism  in 
Greece,  69,  70 

Inner  or  inward  light,  49,  50,  83, 
85,86 

Innere  Stimme,  85 

Inquiry  Concerning  Virtue  and 
Merit,  Shaftesbury,  65,  91;  into 
the  origin  of  our  Ideas  of  Beauty 
and  Morality,  Hutcheson,  91 

Inspiring  effect  of  ideality,  49, 
50 

Instinct,  4,  36,  68;  as  derived  from 
inheritance,  97,  98;  ethics  of, 
68;  vs.  intuition,  68,  81 

Instinctive  theory,  xi 

Institutes  of  Moral  Philosophy, 
Tefft.67. 

Institutionism,  early  acceptance  of, 
among  persons  and  races,  6 1 ,  62 ; 
ecclesiastical,  of  Middle  Ages, 
75,  76;  English,  78;  German, 
84-88;  French,  89;others,6i,  62, 
63,  88,  89;  narrowness  of,  xi, 
117,  120:  obiections  to,  62,  69, 
70,  87,  88,  120 

Instruction,  see  Education  and 
Information 

Intelligence,  as  affected  by  lower 
and  higher  desire,  38;  human 
vs.  animal,  35-38,  47,  48 

Interest,  in  study  should  be  excited 
in  youth,  197-202 ;  should  be  and 
can  be  created  in  one's  own 
work,  210,  263-265 

Introduction  to  Ethics,  Murray, 
66;  Thilly,  98,  100,  142:  to  the 
Principles  of  Morals  and  Legis- 
lation,   Bentham,    95 


338 


INDEX 


Introductory Study \of 'Ethics ,Fite,  46 
Intuition  vs.  instinct,  68,  81 
Intuitionism,  emotional  of  Shaftes- 
bury, 65,  91;   perceptional   of, 
Butler,  64,  65,  92;  rational  of, 
Kant,    80-86,    89,    90;    restric- 
tions of,  xi,  117,  121,  122 
Invention  furthered   by  political 

and  industrial  liberty,  323 
Inward  light,  49,  50,  83,  85,  86 

James,  William,  xii 
Janet,  Paul,  66,  89 
Jealousy     of    a     Country     Town, 

Balzac,  57 
Jevons,  Jr.,  W.,  65 
Jouffroy,  Theodore,  92 
Justice,  importance  of,  242 

Kant,    Immanuel,   65-68,    80-86, 
89-91,  101;  fortunate  effects  of 
his    theories,    89,     90;     unfor- 
tunate effects,  81-89 
Kedney,  J.  S.,  93 
Kindergarten,  198 
Kings,  divine  right  of,  280,  281 
Knights  of  Columbus,  129 
Knowledge,    its    influence    upon 
conduct,  43,  44,  168-170;  one's 
own,  in  determining  truth,  2 

Labor  agitator,  inciting  to  dis- 
content, 265,  266;  party,  its 
demands  in  England,  256 

Laboring  men,  loyalty  to  nation, 
of,  in  recent  war,  305 

Ladd,  G.  T.,  67 

Langley,  Dr.,  13 

Law,  external,  not  a  cure  for  per- 
sonal immorality,  225;  not  a 
substitute  for  private  influence, 
285-289 

Law  of  Love  and  Love  as  a  Law, 
The,  Hopkins,  64,  93 

Laws,  as  framed  and  administered 
by  government,  292-314;  con- 
cerning business,  294,  295; 
interfering  with  business,  295- 
303;  regulating  prices  and 
wages,  295-299;  stimulating  in- 
dividual initiative,  315-326 

Laws,  S.  S.,  xiv 

Leadership,  as  stimulated  by 
government,  249-251,  315-318 

League  of   Democratic   Nations, 


not  preventive  of  war,  326-328 

Lecky,  W.  E.  H.,  75 

Lectures  on  Metaphysics,  Hamil- 
ton, 7,  63;  Moral  Philosophy, 
Jouffroy,  92;  Moral  Philosophy, 
Peabody,  55,  65,  95;  Philosophy 
of  the  Human  Mind,  Brown,  65 

Leibnitz,  G.  W.,  32,  82 

Leitch,  John,  261 

L'Estrange,  R.,  63 

Leverhulme,  Lord,  263 

Leviathan,  Hobbes,  78 

Levy-Bruhl,  Lucian,  89 

Liberty,  educational,  293;  busi- 
ness, 294-314;  industrial,  257- 
261;  political  and  social,  270- 
272,  275-280,  294,  322-328; 
religious,  293,  294 

Life  in  Song,  A,  Raymond,  281, 
329,  330 

Life  of  the  Spirit,  R.  Eucken,  37 

Lindsay,  B.  B.,  240 

Locke,  John,  64,  79,  92 

Locksley  Hall,  Tennison,  327 

Lotze,  Rudolph  H.,  70 

Louis  XIV.,  of  France,  135 

Love,  as  the  aim  of  obligation,  93- 
95;  moral  influence  of,  on  a 
child,   183,  184 

Lowell,  J.  R.,  158-160 

Loyalty,  a  citizen's  to  his  govern- 
ment, 267-270;  to  the  United 
States  Constitution,  276;  work- 
men's, to  their  industry,  264 

Luck  in  business,  248,  249 

Lucretius,  74 

Mackenzie,  J.  S.,  95,  100 

McCosh,  James,  92 

Majority,  rule  of,  280-285;  used 
to  enforce  by  physical  pre- 
dominance, 285-291,  298-301 

Malebranche,  Nicholas,  92 

Man,  origin  of, and  of  mankind,  1,2 

Manners  as  related  to  Morality, 
193;  taught  to  children,  191-193 

Manual  of  Ethics,  The,  Mackenzie, 
94,  100 

Marriage,  1 73-181;  false  views 
with  reference  to,  177;  influence 
of  parents  on,  177, 1 78 ;  influence 
of  prospects  of,  1 76 ;  precautions 
preceding,  175-178;  why  cere- 
monials accompany,  214 


INDEX 


339 


Martin,  S.  A.,  ioo 

Martineau,  James,  53,  65,  91 

Materialism,  vii-xi,  38-39,  78,  79 

Matthew,  St.,  153,  240 

Mature,  methods  of  influencing 
morally,  the,  vs.  the  young, 
206-208 

Master,  great,  30;  of  Galilee,  128, 
139;  Nazareth,  125;  the  intel- 
lectual methods  of,  139 

Meakin,  Frederick,  63 

Mechanism  of  the  Human  Mind, 
Hartley,  79 

Meditations,  Marcus  Aurelius,  68, 
74,  102;  Descartes,  79 

Memorabilia,  Xenophon,  72,  100 

Memory,  38;  learning  from,  43 

Men  distinguished  from  animals, 

Mencius,  46 

Mental,  meaning  of  the  word  as 
used  in  this  volume,  4;  is 
rational,  unselfish,  and  humane, 
20,  21;  underlies  all  develop- 
ment of  art,  religion,  or  science, 
21-23 

Mental  and  bodily,  connection 
between  the  two,  23,  82,  83;  not 
related  as  are  material  causes 
with  effects,  29-34 

Mental  and  Moral  Philosophy, 
Bain,  96 

Mental  faculties,  Hamilton's 
classification  of,  7;  of  animals 
vs.  men,  37,  38 

Mental  Science,  Bain,  63 

Metaphysics,  Lectures  on,  Hamil- 
ton, 7,  63 

Metaphysics  of  Ethics,  Kant,  65 

Methods  of  Ethicsf  Sidgwick,  55, 
96,  100 

Metropolitan  Magazine,  263 

Meyers,  C.  S.,  36 

Michigan  primary  election  meth- 
ods, 278 

Militarism,  vii 

Mill,  James,  53,96;  John  S.,  96,97 

Mind,  definition  of  the  term,  4, 
148,  149;  desire  of,  should  sub- 
ordinate not  suppress  that  of 
the  body,  123-140 

Moderation,  Greek,  132,  133 

Modesty,  237.  See  Immodesty 
and  Humility 


Mohammedan,  xiv,  46 

Monarchy,  272-274 

Money,  a  medium  of  exchange, 

243-244;    making    it,    not    the 

chief  aim  of  business,  243,  244; 

nor  chiefly  desirable  in  planning 

for    human    betterment,    308, 

309 ;  saving  it,  247 
Monks,  124,  128 
Montessori  System  of  Teaching, 

186 
Moore,  T.  V.,  68;  W.  L.,  221 
Moral    delinquents,   how    should 

be  treated  by  the  State,  240 
Moral  Law,  The,  E.  J.  Hamilton, 

90 
Moral  Nature  of  Man,  The,  Bucke, 

14 

Moral  Philosophy,  Combe,  141; 
Fairchild,  93;  Stewart,  92; 
Haven,  90;  Handbook  of,  Cal- 
derwood,  64,  88;  Institutes  of, 
Tefft,  67;  Lectures  on,  Jouffroy, 
92;Peabody,  55,  65,  95 

Moral  Science,  Elements  of,  Por- 
ter, 81;  Wayland,  89,  95,  182, 
242,  243 

Moral  sense  theory,  91-93,  121 

Moral  Sentiments,  Theory  of,  Adam 
Smith,  91,  93 

Moral  traits  enumerated,  189 

Moralist,  The,  Shaftesbury,  91 

Morality,  furthered  by  civil  lib- 
erty, 323-326 ;  personal,  not  the 
result  of  external  laws,  285-289, 
303-305;  related  to  religion, 
xiv-xvi,  329,  330;  taught  in 
schools,  170,  190,  195,  196,  203, 
204;  traced  to  external  condi- 
tions, ix-xi;  to  those  within  the 
mind,  ix-xi;  same  standards  of, 
desirable  in  a  country,  xv 

Morality,  Principles  and  Practice 
of,  Robinson,  67;  Rational  Ideal 
of,  Fitzgerald,  93 

Morals,  Elements  of,  Janet,  66; 
History  of  European,  Lecky, 
75 

Moving  pictures,  170, 173, 177, 237 

Muirhead,  J.  H.,  66 

Mullet,  M.  A.,  261 

Munsterberg,  Hugo,  98 

Murray,  J.  C,  66 

Musset-Pathay,  66,  68 


340 


INDEX 


Mystery,  effect  of,   on  children, 

186,  187 
Mysticism,  102, 103;  Christian,  76, 

99;  pagan, 76 
Mystics,  76,  77 

Nature  of  Virtue,  The,  J.  Edwards, 
93 

Nature,  Stoic  method  of  living 
according  to,  74,  92 

Neo-Platonism,  75,  76,  99 

Nervous  system,  automatic  and 
cerebro-spinal,  13,  14;  preceded 
by  muscular,  12-14 

New  Essays  on  the  Human  Under- 
standing, Leibnitz,  32 

Newspapers,  occasional  evil  in- 
fluence of,  169,  178 

Nietzsche,  Frederick,  87,  88 

Non-selfish  character  of  mental 
desires,  20-23,  152-154 

Noumenal  mind  according  to 
Kant,  80,  81,84 

Novels,  when  injurious,  173,  178, 
179,  238,  239 

Novum  Organum,  Bacon,  77 

Nude  art,  236-238 

Obligation,  attributed  to  expe- 
riencing pleasure  and  pain,  70- 
72;  divine  origin  of,  67-69,  74; 
end  and  source  of,  similar  in 
character  in  the  same  mind,  65- 
67;  how  it  influences  the  whole 
mind,  120-122;  how  the  sense 
of,  is  derived,  61,  63,  111-122; 
main  questions  concerning,  61; 
traced  to  thinking,  104-107; 
traced  to  feeling,  107-110; 
traced  to  feeling  and  also 
thinking,   111-122 

Observation,  as  influencing  de- 
sire and  character,  157-163; 
how  and  when  of  benefit  to  one, 
42 

Occam,  William,  75 

Orator's  Manual,  The,  Raymond, 
139,  236 

Order,  importance  of,  in  aesthetics 
and  ethics,  143,  146 

Outlines  of  /Esthetics,  Lotze,  70 

Overdressing,  228 

Overindulgence,  133,  134 

Overreaching  desires,  133-136 


Ownership,  public,  295-299,  308- 
312 

Pain  and  pleasure,  experience  of, 
as  the  source  of  ethics  and 
aesthetics,  70-72,  97-99 

Painting,  Sculpture,  and  Arch- 
tecture  as  Representative  Arts, 
Raymond,  236 

Paley,  W.,  96 

Paradoxes,  Cicero,  74 

Parentage,  training  for,  173,  174 

Parliament,  274,  327 

Patents  granted  by  government, 
317 

Patronage  in  a  Republic,  289-291 

Paul,  Apostle,  26,  31,  57 

Paulsen,  F.,  55~57>  67,  87,  107 

Peabody,  A.  P.,  55,  65,  95 

Perception,  4;  when  influencing 
higher  desire,  42 

Perceptional  intuitionism,  65,  92 

Personality,  as  influencing  an- 
other's desire  and  character, 
45,  46,  125 

Personal  will  in  determining 
character,  10,  11,  138 

Phcedo,  Plato,  54 

Phenology,  18 

Phenomenal,  according  to  Kant, 
80,  81 

Philebus,  Plato,  72 

Phillips,  W.,  264 

Philosophical  Introduction  to 
Ethics,  Gibson,  100 

Philosophy,  of  Conduct,  Ladd,  67; 
Martin,  100;  of  the  Human 
Mind,  Brown,  65;  of  Loyalty, 
Royce,  67;  of  Moral  Feeling, 
Abercrombie,  141;  of  the  Right, 
Hegel,  86 

Physiological  psychology,  xii 

Physiologische  Psychologie,  Wundt, 
70 

Placards  used  for  moral  sugges- 
tions in  schools,  195,  196 

Plato,  46,  54,  72,  73,  75,  95,  141 

Platonism,  99 

Pleasure,  see  Pain 

Pleasures  and  recreations  of  so- 
ciety, 230-240 

Pledge  not  to  drink  intoxicants,  222 

Plotinus,  75 

Plutarch,  75 


INDEX 


341 


Pogson,  F.  L.,  37 

Political,  corruption  resulting  from 
government  ownership  or  man- 
agement, 295-301;  liberty  due 
to  expression  of  higher  desire, 
270-272 

Porphyry,  75,  76 

Porter,  Noah,  81 

Practice  and  theory,  as  philo- 
sophically separated  by  Kant, 
81-86,  89,  90 

Pragmatism,  as  related  to  utili- 
tarianism, 96;  to  the  self-realiza- 
tion theory,  100,  101 

Premierof  England  vs.  President 
of  United  States,  274 

President  of  United  States  vs. 
Premier  of  England,  274 

Price,  Richard,  80 

Priestley,  Joseph,  79 

Principles,  of  Ethics,  Dymond,  90; 
of  Morality,  Wundt,  8,  64 

Problem  of  Conduct,  The,  Taylor, 
138 

Problems  in  Ethics,  Kedney,  93 

Professor,  disloyalty  of  a,  in  Theo- 
logical Seminary,  viii 

Professors  _  in  Germany  tempo- 
rarily disregardful  of  scientific 
accuracy,  vi 

Prohibition  _  of  manufacture  and 
sale  of  intoxicants,  221-225; 
not  a  cure  for  immorality,  225 

Progress  and  Poverty,  Henry 
George,  242 

Progress  in  methods  of  govern- 
ment due  to  mental  desire,  270- 
272 

Prolegomena  of  Ethics,  Green,  55, 
74,99,101 

Promises,  keeping,  213 

Property,  how  rightly  acquired, 
242 ;  by  purchase  or  inheritance, 
318;  violation  of  its  rights,  242, 
243 

Protagoras,  74 

Psychical,  or  mental,  and  physical, 
or  material,  brought  into  ap- 
parently causal  relationship  in 
the  consciousness  of  the  human 
mind,  82,  83 

Psychology,  John  Dewey,  64; 
W.  James,  xii;  Handbook  of, 
Baldwin,  49,  54,  70 


Public  sentiment,  influence  on 
reform,  269-271 

Quakers,  83,  86 

Racing,  as  connected  with  betting, 
233,  234;  with  automobiles,  233, 

234 

Rashdall,  Hastings,  66,  93 

Rational,  associated  with  the  non- 
selfish,  2 1 ;  as  one  source  of  the 
sense  of  obligation,  70-72,  77, 
78.     See  Mental  and  Thinking 

Rational  Ideal  of  Morality,  The 
Fitzgerald,  93 

Rational  intuitionism  according 
to  Kant,  80-86,  89,  90 

Raymond,  B.  W.,  xiii,  245;  G.  L., 
29,  139,  142,  143,  236,  329,  330 

Recent  Tendencies  in  Ethics,  Sor- 
ley,  61 

Ree,  Paul,  98 

Reform,  accomplished  with  revo- 
lution, 268-270;  in  character, 
influenced  by  both  the  indivi- 
dual and  the  community,  239, 
240 

Reid,  Thomas,  92 

Religion,  as  related  to  morality, 
xiv-xvi,  329,  330;  as  taught  in 
schools,  195;  in  conventional 
observances  for  the  benefit  of 
society,  209-211;  in  the  home, 
186-188;  liberty  of,  293;  rela- 
tions of,  to  science  and  art,  29, 
30 

Religious  Life,  Elementary  Forms 
of  the,  Durkheim,  89 

Repetition  of  action,  its  influence 
on  morality,  163-166 

Representative  character  of  art, 
29-32,  82,  83,  147;  of  a  republic, 
274-280 

Republic,  constitutional,  273 ;  rep- 
resentative, 274-280 

Republic,  The,  Plato,  141 

Republican  party,  278 

Republicanism,  271 

Residence,  a  man's,  as  related  to 
higher  or  lower  desire,  228-230 

Responsibility  for  others,  feeling 
of,  overdone,  207,  208;  for  self, 
206;  the  latter  causing  depres- 
sion to  the  young,  152 


342 


INDEX 


Restraint,  moral,  needed  by  men, 
x,  xi 

Reverence,  in  children,  186-188; 
in  mature  characters,  209,  210; 
taught  in  school,  194-196 

Revolution,  294;  not  the  method 
of  higher  desire,  viii-xi,  268-270, 
312-3 14 ;  when  justified,  269, 270 

Revolutionists,  268-270;  their 
errors,  269 

Reward,  large,  an  incentive  to 
large  service,  249-251 

Robinson,  E.  G.,  67 

Roman,  church,  unable,  through 
external  physical  force  to  pre- 
vent war,  378;  ethics,  62,  63, 68- 
75;  republic,  unable  to  enforce 
peace,  378 

Rome,  271,  275,  280 

Roosevelt,  T.,  158-160,  304 

Royce,  J.,  46,  67 

Russia,  v,  18 

Russian  revolutionists,  vi 

Sabotage,  viii 

Salary,  large,  needed  for  large 
service,  248-251 

Salvation  Army  and  Volunteers, 
129 

Saving  money,  247, 248 

Schools,  194-205;  appeal  in,  to 
higher  and  lower  desire,  197- 
202;  athletics  in,  201,  202,  263, 
264;  competition  in,  200,  201; 
coeducational,  203-205 ;  larger, 
small,  202;  physical  drill  and 
psychical  practice,  196,  197, 
200;  reverence,  religion,  and 
morals  as  taught  in,  170,  194- 
196,  203,  204 

Schopenhauer,  Arthur,  67,  82 

Schwab,  C.  M.,  259 

Science,  cause  and  effect  as  re- 
lated in,  and  in  art  and  religion, 
29t  30,  81-83;  confirmation  of 
the  theories  of  this  book,  12-23, 

o  32-34 

Science  of  Duty,  Day,  66 

Science,  the  magazine,  12 

Scientific  late  conclusions  apt  to 
concur  with  those  of  early  com- 
mon sense,  69 

Scrupulousness  in  personal  char- 
acter, 209 


Self-control  and  feeling  of  respon- 
sibility, 206-208 

Self-denial  and  sacrifice,  express- 
ing higher  desire,  313,  314 

Self-love,  necessary  in  character, 
125 

Self -Realization,  an  Outline  of 
Ethics,  Wright,  H.  W.,  57,  100 

Self-realization,  theory  of  ethics, 
xi,  99-103,  116 

Sellers  and  buyers,  241-251 

Seneca,  63,  74 

Sensation,  physical,  4,  12;  effect 
of,  rather  than  of  truth,  some- 
times sought  in  novels  and 
dramas,  238,  239 

Sensationalism  in  philosophy,  79 

Sermons  on  Human  Nature,  But- 
ler, 64,  90,  91 

Seth,  James,  95,  100 

Settlement  workers,  x 

Seven  capital  sins  of  the  Catho- 
lics, 134 

Shaftesbury,  Lord  (Arthur  Ashley 
Cooper),  65,  67,  9i"93»  107 

Shame  accompanying  unchastity, 
214 

Shaw,  C.  G.,  56,  67 

Sidgwick,  Henry,  55,  96,  100 

Simmel,  Georg,  98 

Sincere,  yet  wrong,  109 

Sincerity.     See  Truthfulness 

Skill  in  balance  dependent  on  will, 

137 

Smith,  Adam,  91,  93 

Smoking,  tobacco,  habit  of,  220- 
221;  by  women,  221 

Social  customs,  habits,  pleasures, 
206-240 

Socialism,  its  nature  and  logical 
results,  310-312;  lessons  con- 
cerning, taught  in  recent  war, 
325,  326;  relying  upon  use  of 
force,  89 

Socialistic,  ix,  x 

Social  Statics,  Herbert  Spencer, 
242 

Society,  ethics  as  related  to  gen- 
eral conditions  in,  ^  206-217; 
religious  conformity  in,  for  the 
sake  of  others,  209-211;  traits 
of  useful  members  of,  209-211 

Socrates,  45,  72,  73 ,  95 

Solomon,  138 


INDEX 


343 


Sophists,  74 

Sorley,  W.  R.,  61 

Spencer,  Herbert,  xii,  53,  66,  97, 
98,  242,  312 

Spinosa,  79 

Standard  Dictionary,  4 

State  as  the  source  of  morality ,  vi-x 

Steel  corporation,  United  States, 
care  for  operatives,  306 

Stephen,  Leslie,  53,  98 

Stewart,  Dugald,  65,  80,  92 

Stimulants,  as  related  to  morals, 
220-225;  intoxicating,  prohibi- 
tion vs.  regulation  of  sale  of, 
222-225 

Stoicism,  99 

Stoics,  68,  69,  73-75,  7$,  80,  92, 
125 

Stork,  T.  D.,  56 

Strait-laced,  the,  not  always  mor- 
ally influential,  208 

Strikes  in  industries,  265,  266,  305 

Study  of  Ethical  Principles,  A, 
Seth,  95,  100 

Study  should  be  made  interesting, 
not  easy,  199 

Subconscious  processes  of  mind, 
influence  of,  159,  160,  168-170 

Subordinating  rather  than  sup- 
pressing lower  desire,  123-140. 
See  Suppressing 

Sudermann,  179 

Suffrage,  278-291;  limitations  of, 
as  applied  to  children,  for- 
eigners, former  slaves,  etc., 
282-289;  right  of,  as  derived 
from  intelligence,  service,  tax- 
paying,  thrift,  etc.,  283,  284; 
used  to  apply  physical  force  to 
the  solving  of  psychical  prob- 
lems, 285-289 

Suffragettes,  viii 

Suggestions,  influence  of,  159-161, 
164,  165,  168-171 

Suppressing  lower  desires,  124, 
128,  149;  easy  remedy  for 
wrong,  but  not  sufficient,  128 

Survival  of  the  fittest,  evolu- 
tionary theory  of,  as  applied  to 
morals,  xii,  99 

Sutherland,  A.,  98 

Swedenborg,  Emmanuel,  82 

Sympathy  as  the  source  and  end 
of  moral  obligation,  xi,  93 


System  of  Ethics,  F.  Paulsen,  55- 
57,.  67,  87,  94,  107;  of  Moral 
Philosophy,  Hutcheson,  65;  of 
Moral  Science,  Hickok,  64,  90 

Systematic  Morality,  Jevons  W., 
65 

Taft,  W.  H.,  278 

Tauler,  76 

Taylor,  A.  E.,  138 

Tefft,  L.  B.,67 

Teleological    ethical    theory,    xi, 

45,  94,.97,  117,  139 

Temptation,  as  affected  by  desire, 

43,44 
Tennyson,  Alfred,  327;  Thomas,  80 
Text  Book  of  Physiology,  Howell, 

18 
Theatre,  237-239 
The  Beginnings  of  Ethics,  Cutler, 

67 

The  Creed  of  Hobbes  Examined, 
Tennyson,  80 

The  Doctrine  of  Philosophic  Ne- 
cessity Explained,  Priestley,  79 

The  Elements  of  Moral  Science, 
Wayland,  89,  95,  182,  242,  243 

The  Eternal  and  Immutable 
Morality,  Cudworth  79 

The  Ethics  of  Evolution,  Bixby, 
55,63 

The  Moral  Law,  E.  J.  Hamilton, 
90 

The  Moralist,  Shaftesbury,  91 

The  Nature  of  Virtue,  Edwards,  93 

Theories  of  ethics,  analogous  in  all 
ages,  as  also  in  the  differences 
between  them,  60;  ancient  and 
mediaeval,  60-76 

Theory,  desire  preventing  its  ap- 
plication to  practice,  45;  philo- 
sophically separated  from  prac- 
tice by  Kant,  81-88 

Theory  of  Moral  Sentiments, 
Adam  Smith,  91,  93 

The  Outlines  of  Moral  Philosophy, 
Stewart,  80 

The  Principles  and  Practices  of 
Morality,  Robinson,  67 

The  Religion  of  Nature  Deline- 
ated, Wallaston,  80 

The  Science  of  Duty,  Day,  93 

The  Theory  of  Good  and  Evil, 
Rashdall,  66,  93 


344 


INDEX 


The  Theory  of  Morals,  Hildreth, 

93 ;  Janet,  94 
The    Unchangeable  Obligations   of 

Natural    Religion,    Clarke,    80, 

95 

The  Value  and  Dignity  of  Life, 
Shaw,  56,  67 

The  World  as  Will  and  Idea,  Scho- 
penhauer, 67,  82 

Thilly,  P.,  55,  57,  67,  98,  100,  107, 
142 

Thinking,  combined  with  feeling, 
as  in  desire,  the  source  of  moral- 
ity, 110-112;  influential  in 
morality  in  both  its  intuitional 
and  reflective  forms,  70-72,  77- 
81,  104-107,  1 16-122 

Thomas  Aquinas,  75 

Thornton,  L.  S.,  56 

Thought,  a  constituent  of  desire, 
5-12,  39 

Times,  the,  Los  Angeles,  236; 
New  York,  278 

Tobacco,  220-221 

Treatise  on  Human  Nature,  Hume, 

79,91 

Trustworthiness  in  children,  191 

True,  the  Beautiful  and  the  Good, 
The,  Cousin,  146 

Truth,  as  the  source  of  influence 
in  a  Republic,  viii-x;  disregard 
of,  in  dramas  and  novels,  238 
239;  when  axiomatic,  27 

Truthfulness,  21 1-2 13;  in  busi- 
ness, 242,  247;  in  children,  191 

Tufts,  J.  H.,  97 

Turks,  109 

Tusculum  Disputations,  Cicero, 
68 

Twilight,  Nietzsche,  87 

Tyranny,     freedom     from     275, 

293 
Types  of  Ethical   Theory,  Marti- 
neau,  53,  65 

Unchangeable  Obligations  of  Nat- 
ural Religion,  The,  Clarke,  80, 

95 

Unconscious.     See  Subconscious 
Underdressing,  227 
Union,  desire  for,  psychical  reason 
for  marriage  and  birth,  3,  4, 

17 

Universal  welfare,  as  the  source 


and  end  of  morality,  xl  See 
Eudaimonian 

University,  false  views  with  ref- 
erence to  methods  and  means 
of  instruction  in,  198,  199 

Utilitarian,  ethical  theory,  xi,  45, 
96,  97;  its  limitations,  117,  139 

Utilitarianism,  J.  S.  Mill,  96 

Utility,  ethical  theory  with  ref- 
erence to,  96,  97 


Vice,  indulgence  in,  leading  to 
repetition  of,  163-165;  pro- 
hibiting portrayal  or  publishing 
details  of,  169,  170;  temptation 
to,  sometimes  repelled  by  high- 
est uninstructed  desire,  43,  44, 
150,  151,  167-170 

Voice  of  God  in  conscience.  See 
God 

Von  Gizycke,  G.,  98 

Von  Shering,  R.,  98 

Voting.     See  Suffrage 


Wages  as  determined  by  govern- 
ment law,  295-302 

War  can  be  best  prevented 
through  influencing  the  higher 
desires  of  individuals,  327-328 

Washburn,  M.  P.,  8,  64 

Washington,  George,  304 

Watson,  J.  S.,  72 

Wayland,  F.,  89,  95,  182,  242 

Webster,  Daniel, 264;  Pelatiah,285 

Welfare  or  eudaimonism,  as  the 
aim  of  morality,  73,  94,  95 

West  Point  Military  Academy, 
250 

Whewell,  W.,  66 

Whipping  children,  190 

Will,  as  a  mental  faculty,  7-1 1; 
effect  upon  it  of  desire,  8;  of 
feeling  7-9;  of  thought,  9;  its 
relation  to  conversion,  40,  41; 
its  responsibility  for  its  action, 
9-1 1 

William  Occam,  75 

Will  to  Power,  Nietzsche,  87 

Wollaston,  W.,  80,  91 

World,  as  Will  and  Idea,  Scho- 
penhauer, 67,  82 

Work,  enjoying  one's,  263-265 


INDEX 


345 


Wright,  H.  W.,  57,  ioo 
Wundt,   W.  M.,  8,  64,  70,  87,  98 


Xenophon,  72,  100 

Young  Men's  and  Women's  Chris- 
tian and  Hebrew  Associations, 


their  influence  in  correcting  the 
errors  of  religious  asceticism, 
129 
Youthful  delinquents,  how  they 
should  be  treated  by  the  States 
and  Courts,  240 

Zeno,  73 


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G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS,  New   York  and  London.  Publishers 


PROFESSOR  RAYMOND'S  WORKS 

Pictures  in  Verse.  With  20  illustrations  by  Maud  Stumm. 
Square  8vo,  in  ornamental  cloth  covers        .         $  .75 

"Little  love  poems  of  a  light  and  airy  character,  describing  pretty  rustic  scenes. 
or  domestic  interiors.  ...  As  charming  for  its  illustrations  as  for  its  reading 
matter." — Detroit  Free  Press. 

"Simple  songs  of  human  every-day  experience  .  .  .  with  a  twinkle  of  homely 
humor  and  a  wholesome  reflection  of  domestic  cheer.  We  like  his  optimistic  senti- 
ments, and  unspoiled  spirit  of  boyishness  when  he  strikes  the  chord  of  love.  It  is 
all  very  true  and  good.!' — The  Independent. 

The  Mountains  about  Williamstown.  With  an  introduction 
by  M.  M.  Miller,  and  35  full-page  illustrations  from 
original  photographs;  oblong  cloth,  gilt  edges     $2.00 

"The  beauty  of  these  photographs  from  so  many  points  of  vantage  would  of  itself 
suffice  to  show  the  fidelity  and  affection  with  which  Professor  Raymond  pursued  the 
theme  of  his  admirably  constructed  poems.  The  introduction  by  his  pupil,  friend, 
and  associate  is  an  exhaustive  study.  No  better  or  more  thorough  review  could  be 
written  of  the  book,  or  more  clearly  point  out  the  directness  and  power  of  Professor 
Raymond's  work.  .  .  .  Among  his  many  books  none  justifies  more  brilliantly 
the  correctness  and  charm  of  his  rhetorical  instruction,  or  his  facility  in  exemplifying 
what  he  commends." — Hartford  (Conn.)  Courant. 

"The  poems  all  show  Dr.  Raymond's  perfect  art  of  expression,  his  deep  and  relig- 
ious love  of  nature,  and  his  profound  reverence  for  the  landscape  he  celebrates. 
Every  New  Englander  will  appreciate  the  volume,  and  Williams  College  men  can 
ill  afford  not  to  possess  it." — Portland  (Me.)  Evening  Express. 

"They  show  a  keen  ear  for  rhythm,  felicity  of  phrase,  exquisite  taste,  a  polished 
style,  and-  often  exalted  feeling.  Mr.  Raymond's  students  .  .  .  and  those_  who 
have  read  his  book  upon  the  principles  that  underlie  art,  poetry,  and  music  will  be 
interested  in  this  clothing,  in  concrete  form,  of  his  poetic  theories.  .  .  .  Dr. 
Miller  makes  in  his  Introduction  a  long  and  lucid  discussion  of  these." — New  York 
Times. 

"The  men  of  Williams  College  especially  owe  him  a  debt  of  gratitude  that  can 
never  be  paid." — Troy  (N.  Y.)  Record. 

"The  many  full-page  illustrations  give  lovely  vistas  of  the  Berkshires  and  of 
the  stream-silvered  valleys  they  guard.  Sometimes  philosophic,  sometimes  purely 
imaginative,  through  all  the  verse  runs  a  high  patriotism  and  a  love  of  beauty  and 
humanity  which  uplifts  and  strengthens." — Boston  Transcript. 

"Verse  that  often  suggests  Bryant  in  its  simplicity  and  dignity.  That  is  surely  a 
sound  model_  for  nature  poetry.  Large  and  finely  produced  photographs  bring  the 
mountains  vividly  before  the  reader.  This  is  not  a  book  to  read  in  the  subway;  but 
lying  on  the  sunny  side  of  a  stony  wall  when  the  leaves  are  bursting  in  spring,  it 
will  surely  appeal. " — Brooklyn  Eagle. 

Modern  Fishers  of  Men.     i2mo,  cloth,  gilt  top     .      $1.00 

"  This  delightful  novel  is  written  with  charming  insight.  The  rare  gift  ofjeharacter 
delineation  the  author  can  claim  in  full.  .  .  .  Shrewd  comments  upon  life  and 
character  add  spice  to  the  pages." — Nashville  Tennessean. 

"Deals  with  love  and  religion  in  a  small  country  town,  and  under  the  facile  pen 
and  keen  humor  of  the  author,  the  various  situations  .  .  .  are  made  the  most  of 
.    .    .   true  to  the  life." — Boston  Globe. 

"Such  a  spicy,  racy,  more-truth-than-fiction  work  has  not  been  placed  in  our 
hands  for  a  long  time." — Chicago  Evening  Journal. 

"A  captivating  story,  far  too  short  .  .  .  just  as  fresh  and  absorbing  as  when  the 
tauthor  laid  down  his  pen  .    .    .   that  was  before  typewriters/' — Denver  Republican. 

"Essentially  humorous,  with  an  undercurrent  of  satire  ....  also  subtle  char- 
acter delineation,  which  will  appeal  strongly  to  those  who  have  the  perceptive  facul- 
ties highly  developed." — San  Francisco  Bulletin. 

"The  book  is  delightful  ....  in  several  ways  very  remarkable.!! — Boston 
Times. 

"A  distinct  surprise  lies  in  this  little  story  ....  of  1879  ....  so  strongly 
does  it  partake  of  the  outlook  and  aim  of  the  new  church  of  to-day.!! — Washington 
Star 

"In  'Modern  Fishers  of  Men,'  one  sees  that  the  Men  and  Religion  Forward 
Movement  existed  before  it  began." — The  Watchman,  Boston. 

"Pleasant  reading  for  those  whom  sad  experience  has  led  to  doubt  the  possibility 
of  a  real  community  uplift  with  lasting  qualities.  The  story  is  brightened  With,  a  1 
quiet  but  none  the  less  hearty  humor." — Cincinnati  Times. 

G.  P.  PUTNAM  S  SONS.  New  York  and   London,  Publishers 


The  Poet's  Cabinet  and  An  Art-Philosopher's  Cabinet, 

two  books  containing  quotations,  the  one  from  the  poems, 
the  other  from  the  aesthetic  works  of  George  Lansing 
Raymond,  selected  and  arranged  alphabetically  accord- 
ing to  subject  by  Marion  Mills  Miller,  Litt.D.,  editor 
of  The  Classics,  Greek  and  Latin,  with  illustrations. 
Each  book  8vo.,  cloth  bound,  gilt  top     .      .      .     $2.00 

"Dr.  Raymond  is  one  of  the  most  just  and  pregnant  critics,  as  well  as  one  of  the 
most  genuine  poets,  that  America  has  produced.  .  .  .  His  verse  generally,  and  his 
prose  frequently,  is  a  solid  pack  of  epigrams;  and  hundreds  of  the  epigrams  are 
vigorous,  fresh,  telling,  worth  collecting  and  cataloguing.  .  .  .  Probably  from 
no  other  American  but  Emerson  could  a  collection  at  all  comparable  be  made. 
Many  of  the  phrases  are  profound  paradox.  .  .  .  Others  are  as  hard-headed  as 
La  Rochefoucauld.  .  .  .  Some  are  plain  common  sense,  set  in  an  audacious  figure, 
or  a  vigorous  turn  of  phrase.  .  .  .  But  few  or  none  of  them  are  trivial.  .  .  . 
As  an  aesthetic  critic,  Professor  Raymond  is,  by  training  and  temperament,  remark- 
ably versatile  and  catholic.  He  is  almost  or  quite  equally  interested  in  architecture, 
painting,  sculpture,  music,  poetry.  .  .  .  Each  is  as  definitely  placed  in  his  system 
as  the  several  instruments  in  a  great  orchestra.  ...  If  Dr.  Raymond  had  been 
born  in  France,  England,  or  Germany,  he  would,  no  doubt,  have  enjoyed  a  wider 
vogue.  But  it  is  just  as  well  that  he  was  none  of  these;  for  the,  as  yet,  aesthetically 
immature  New  World  has  sore  need  of  him. — Revue  Internationale,  Paris. 

"We  risk  little  in  foretelling  a  day  when  all  considerable  libraries,  private  as  well 
as  public,  will  be  deemed  quite  incomplete  if  lacking  these  twin  volumes.  Years 
after  the  thinker  has  paid  the  debt  to  nature  due,  his  thoughts  will  rouse  action  and 
emotion  in  the  hearts  and  minds  of  generations  now  unborn." — Worcester  (Mass.) 
Gazette. 

"This  Poet's  Cabinet  is  the  best  thing  of  its  class — that  confined  to  the  works  of 
one  author — upon  which  our  eyes  have  fallen,  either  by  chance  or  purpose.  We 
can't  help  wishing  that  we  had  a  whole  book-shelf  of  such  volumes  in  our  own 
private  library." — Columbus  (O.)  Journal. 

"The  number  and  variety  of  the  subjects  are  almost  overwhelming,  and  the 
searcher  for  advanced  or  new  thought  as  expressed  by  this  particular  philosopher 
has  no  difficulty  in  coming  almost  immediately  upon  something  that  may  strike 
his  fancy  or  aid  him  in  his  perplexities.  To  the  student  of  poetry  and  the  higher 
forms  of  literature,  it  may  be  understood  that  the  volume  will  be  of  distinct  aid." — 
Utica  (N.  Y.)  Observer. 

"A  wide  range  of  topics,  under  appropriate  heads,  and  their  classification  in 
alphabetic  order,  thus  making  the  work  convenient  for  reference.  .  .  .  Editors, 
authors,  teachers,  public  speakers,  and  many  others  will  find  it  a  useful  volume, 
filled  with  quotable  passages  in  astonishing  numbers  when  it  is  remembered  that 
they  are  the  work  of  a  single  author." — Hartford  (Conn.)  Times. 

"  Dr.  Miller's  task  in  selecting  representative  extracts  from  Professor  Raymond's 
works  has  not  been  a  light  one,  for  there  has  been  no  chaff  among  the  wheat,  and 
there  was  an  ever  present  temptation  to  add  bulk  to  the  book  through  freedom  in 
compilation.  He  thought  best,  however,  to  eliminate  all  but  the  features  which 
revealed  the  rare  rich  soul  and  personality  of  the  poet,  and  each  quotation  is  a  gem." 
— Albany  (N.  Y.)  Times-Union. 

"  The  book  contains  a  careful  and  authoritative  selection  of  the  best  things  which 
this  brilliant  man  of  letters  has  given  to  the  literary  world.  .  .  .  The  compiler 
has  done  fine  work.  .  .  .  One  cannot  turn  to  a  page  without  coming  across  some 
quotation  which  fits  in  for  the  day  with  the  happiest  result.  Dr.  Raymond's  satire 
is  keen  but  kindly,  his  sentiment  sweet  and  tender,  and  his  philosophy  convincing 
and  useful." — Buffalo  (N.  Y.)  Courier. 

"Everybody  who  knows  anything  about  literature  knows,  of  course,  that  Dr. 
Raymond  is  a  philosopher  as  well  as  poet  ...  no  mere  rhymester,  no  simple 
weaver  of  ear-tickling  phrases  and  of  well-measured  verse  and  stanza.  There  is 
pith  as  well  as  music  in  his  song  ...  all  breathing  power  as  well  as  grace." — 
Brooklyn  (N.  Y.)  Citizen. 

"To  study  the  works  of  any  one  man  so  that  we  are  completely  familiar  with  his 
ideas  upon  all  important  subjects — if  the  man  have  within  him  any  element  of  great- 
ness— is  a  task  which  is  likely  to  repay  the  student's  work.  .  .  .  This  fact  makes 
the  unique  quality  of  the  present  volume  .  .  .  quotations  which  deal  with  practi- 
cally every  subject  to  be  found  in  more  general  anthologies." — Boston  (Mass.) 
Advertiser. 

G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS.  New  York  and  London,  Publishers 


ProfessorRaymond'sSystemofCOMPARATIVE/ESTHETICS 

I. — Art  in  Theory.    8vo,  cloth  extra $1-75 

"  Scores  an  advance  upon  the  many  art  criticisms  extant ....  Twenty  brilliant 
chapters,  pregnant  with  suggestion. " — Popular  Science  Monthly. 

"A  well  grounded,  thoroughly  supported,  and  entirely;  artistic  conception  of  art 
that  will  lead  observers  to  distrust  the  charlatanism  that  imposes  an  idle  and  super- 
ficial mannerism  upon  the  public  in  place  of  true  beauty  and  honest  workmanship. " 
— The  New  York  Times. 

"  His  style  is  good,  and  his  logic  sound  and  .  .  .  of  the  greatest  possible  service 
to  the  student  of  artistic  theories.!! — Art  Journal  (London). 

II.—  The  Representative  Significance  of  Form.  8 vo,  cloth  extra  $2.00 

"A  valuable  essay.  .  .  .  Professor  Raymond  goes  so  deep  into  causes  as  to 
explore  the  subconscious  and  the  unconscious  mind  for  a  solution  of  his  problems, 
and  eloquently  to  range  through  the  conceptions  of  religion,  science  and  metaphysics 
in  order  to  find  fixed  principles  of  taste.  .  .  .  A  highly  interesting  discussion. " — 
The  Scotsman  (Edinburgh). 

"Evidently  the  ripe  fruit  of  years  of  patient  and  exhaustive  study  on  the  part  of  a 
man  singularly  fitted  for  his  task.  It  is  profound  in  insight,  searching  in  analysis, 
broad  in  spirit,  and  thoroughly  modern  in  method  and  sympathy. " — The  Universalist 
Leader. 

"Its  title  gives  no  intimation  to  the  general  reader  of  its  attractiveness  for  him,  or 
to  curious  readers  of  its  widely  discursive  range  of  interest.  .  .  .  Its  broad  range 
may  remind  one  of  those  scythe-bearing  chariots  with  which  the  ancient  Persians 
used  to  mow  down  hostile  files. " — The  Outlook. 

III. — Poetry  as  a  Representative  Art.    8vo,  cloth  extra         ^   $i-75 

"I  have  read  it  with  pleasure,  and  a  sense  of  instruction  on  many  points." — 
Francis  Turner  Palgrave,  Professor  of  Poetry,  Oxford  University. 

"Dieses  ganz  vortreffliche  Werk. " —  Englischen  Sludien,  Universit&t  Breslau. 

"An  acute,  interesting,  and  brilliant  piece  of  work.  ...  As  a  whole  the  essay 
deserves  unqualified  praise.!.' — N.  Y.  Independent. 

IV,— Painting,  Sculpture,  and  Architecture  as  Representative  Arts. 
With  225  illustrations.     8vo  .        .        .        .        .        .    $2.50 

"The  artist  will  find  in  it  a  wealth  of  profound  and  varied  learning;  of  original, 
suggestive,  helpful  thought   .    .    .  of  absolutely  inestimable  value. " — The  Looker-on. 

"Expression  by  means  of  extension  or  size,  .  .  .  shape,  .  .  .  regularity  in 
outlines  .  .  .  the  human  body  .  .  .  posture,  gesture,  and  movement,  .  .  .  are 
all  considered.  ...  A  specially  interesting  chapter  is  the  one  on. color." — 
Current  Literature. 

"The  whole  book  is  the  work  of  a  man  of  exceptional  thoughtfulness,  who  says 
what  he  has  to  say  in  a  remarkably  lucid  and  direct  manner.'! — Philadelphia  JPress. 

V.— The  Genesis  of  Art  Form.    Fully  illustrated.    8vo  .        .     $2.25 

"In  a  spirit  at  once  scientific  and  that  of  the  true  artist,  he  pierces  through  the 
manifestations  of  art  to  their  sources,  and  shows  the  relations  intimate  and  essential, 
between  painting,  sculpture,  poetry,  music,  and  architecture.  A  book  that  possesses 
not  only  singular  value,  but  singular  charm." — N.  Y.  Tunes. 

"A  help  and  a  delight.  Every  aspirant  for  culture  in  any  of  the  liberal  arts,  includ- 
ing music  and  poetry,  will  find  something  in  this  book  to  aid  him. " — Boston  Times. 

"It  is-impossible  to  withhold  one's  admiration  from  a  treatise  which  exhibits  in 
such  a  large  degree  the  qualities  of  philosophic  criticism.'! — Philadelphia  Press. 

VI. — Rhythm  and  Harmony  in  Poetry  and  Music,    Together  with 
Music  as  a  Representative  Art.    8vo,  cloth  extra     .    $1.75 

"Professor  Raymond  has  chosen  a  delightful  subject,  and  he  treats  it  with  all  the 
charm  of  narrative  and  high  thought  and  profound  study." — New  Orleans  States. 

"The  reader  must  be,  indeed,  a  person  either  of  supernatural  stupidity  or  of 
marvelous  erudition,  who  does  not  discover  much  information  in  Prof.  Raymond's 
exhaustive, and  instructive  treatise.  From  page  to  page  it  is  full  of  suggestion." — 
The  Academy  (London). 

VII,— Proportion  and   Harmony  of  Line  and  Color  in  Painting, 
Sculpture,  and  Architecture.    Fully  illustrated.    8vo.    $2.50 

"  Marked  by  profound  thought  along  lines  unfamiliar  to  most  readers  and  thinkers. 
.  .  .  When  grasped,  however,  it  becomes  a  source  of  great  enjoyment  and  exhil- 
aration. .  .  .  No  critical  person  can  afford  to  ignore  so  valuable  a  contribution  to 
the  art-thought  of  the  day. " — The  Art  Interchange  (N.  Y.). 

"One  does  not  need  to  be  a  scholar  to  follow  this  scholar  as  he  teaches  while 
6eeming  to  entertain,  for  he  does  both. " — Burlington  Hawkeye. 

"  The  artist  who  wishes  to  penetrate  the  mysteries  of  color,  the  sculptor  who  desires 
to  cultivate  his  sense  of  proportion,  or  the  architect  whose  ambition  is  to  reach  to  a 
high  standard  will  find  the  work  helpful  and  inspiring." — Boston  Transcript. 

G.  P.  PUTNAM'S   SONS,  New  York  and  London,  Publishers 


TEXT-BOOKS  BY  PROFESSOR  RAYMOND 

The  Essentials  of  Esthetics.    8vo.    Illustrated.  #2.50 

This  work,  which  is  mainly  a  compendium  of  the  author's  system  of  Comparative 
Esthetics,  previously  published  in  seven  volumes,  was  prepared  by  request,  for  a 
text-book  and  for  readers  whose  time  is  too  limited  to  study  the  minutiae  of  the 
subject. 

"It  can  hardly  fail  to  make  talent  more  rational,  genius  more  conscious  of  the 
principles  of  art,  and  the  critic  and  connoisseur  better  equipped  for  impression, 
judgment,  or  appraisement." — N.  Y.  Times. 

"In  spite  of  all  that  has  been  written  on  the  subject  from  widely  contrasted 
standpoints,  this  manual  has  distinct  claims  on  students.  " — The  Standard  (London). 

"His  evidence  is  clear  and  straightforward,  and  his  conclusions  eminently  scholarly 
and  sound." — Vanity  Fair  (London.) 

"In  his  scientific  excursion,  he  makes  hard  things  easy  to  the_  lay  mind.  The 
serious  student  of  art  cannot  fail  to  find  the  book  interesting,  and  in  certain  import- 
ant matters  convincing." — Manchester  (England)  Guardian. 

"This  book  is  a  valuable  contribution  to  an  important  subject  which  may  help 
us  to  understand  more  fully  not  only  that  a  picture,  or  a  poem,  or  a  musical  com- 
position is  good,  but  also  why  it  is  good,  and  what  constitutes  its  excellence." — The 
Christian  Register  (Boston). 

"So  lucid  in  expression  and  rich  in  illustration  that  every  page  contains  matter  of 
deep  interest  even  to  the  general  reader." — Boston  Herald. 

"Dr.  Raymond's  book  will  be  invaluable.  He  shows  a  knowledge  both  extensive 
and  exact  of  the  various  fine  arts,  and  accompanies  his  ingenious  and  suggestive 
theories  by  copious  illustrations." — The  Scotsman  (Edinburgh). 

"The  whole  philosophy  underlying  this  intelligent  art-criticism  should  be  given 
the  widest  possible  publicity." — Boston  Globe. 

The  Orators  Manual.     i2mo       ....         $1.50 

A  Practical  and  Philosophic  Treatise  on  Vocal  Culture,  Emphasis,  and  Gesture, 
together  with  Hints  for  the  Composition  of  Orations  and  Selections  for  Declamation 
and  Reading,  designed  as  a  Text-book  for  Schools  and  Colleges,  and  for  Public 
Speakers  and  Readers  who  are  obliged  to  Study  without  an  Instructor,  fully  revised 
with  important  Additions  after  the  Fifteen  Edition. 

"It  is  undoubtedly  the  most  complete  and  thorough  treatise  on  oratory  for  the 
practical  student  ever  published." — The  Educational  Weekly,  Chicago. 

"I  consider  it  the  best  American  book  upon  technical  elocution.  It  has  also 
leanings  toward  a  philosophy  of  expression  that  no  other  book  written  by  an  Ameri- 
can has  presented." — Moses  True  Brown,  Head  of  the  Boston  School  of  Oratory. 

"The  work  is  evidently  that  of  a  skilful  teacher  bringing  before  students  of  oratory 
the  results  of  philosophical  thinking  and  successful  experience  in  an  admirable  form 
and  a  narrow  compass." — J,  W.  Churchill,  Professor  of  Homiletics,  Andover  Theo- 
logical Seminary. 

"I  have  long  wished  for  just  such  a  book.  It  is  thoroughly  practical,  and  descend3 
into  details,  really  helping  the  speaker." — J.  M.  Hoppin,  D.D.,  Professor  of  Hom- 
iletics, Yale. 

"The  completeness,  exactness,  and  simplicity  of  this  manual  excite  my  admira- 
tion. It  is  so  just  and  full  of  nature." — A.  T.  McGill,  D.D.,  LL.D.,  Professor  o! 
Homiletics,  Princeton. 

The  Writer  (with  Post  Wheeler,  Litt.D.)     i2mo.      $1.00 

A  Concise,  Complete,  and  Practical  Text-book  of  Rhetoric,  designed  to  aid  in  the 
Appreciation,  as  well  as  Production  of  All  Forms  of  Literature,  Explaining,  for  the 
first  time,  the  Principles  of  Written  Discourses  by  correlating  them  to  those  of  Oral 
discourse.     Former  editions  fully  revised. 

"A  book  of  unusual  merit.  A  careful  examination  creates  the  impression  that  the 
exercises  have  been  prepared  by  practical  teachers,  and  the  end  in  view  is  evidently 
to  teach  rather  than  to  give  information. " — The  Pacific  Educational  Journal. 

"The  pupil  will  forget  he  is  studying  rhetoric,  and  will  come  to  express  himself  for 
the  pure  pleasure  he  has  in  this  most  beautiful  art." — Indiana  School  Journal. 

"It  reaches  its  purpose.  _  While  especially  valuable  as  a  text-book  in  schools,  it  is 
a  volume  that  should  be  in  the  hands  of  every  literary  worker." — State  Gazette, 
Trenton,  N.  J. 

"The  treatment  is  broader  and  more  philosophical  than  in  the  ordinary  text-book. 
Every  species  of  construction  and  figure  is  considered.  The  student  has  his  critical 
and  literary  sense  further  developed  by  .  .  .  the  best  writings  in  the  language  used 
to  illustrate  certain  qualities  of  style." — The  School  Journal. 

G.  P.  PUTNAM'S    SONS,  New   York  and  London,  Publishers 


TEXT-BOOKS  BY  PROFESSOR  RAYMOND 

Ethics  and  Natural  Law.     8vo.      .         .         .     Net,  $2.25 

A  Reconstructive  Review  of  Moral  Philosophy,  Applied  to  the  Rational  Art  of 
Living, — a  Book  that  is  in  effect  a  Continuation  and  Completion  of  the  Author's 
well-known  Esthetic  Works,  showing  the  Relationship  of  the  Principles  underlying 
Art  to  the  Culture  of  Character. 

The  lines  of  thought  presented  in  this  volume  differ,  in  important  regards,  from 
those  unfolded  in  former  theories  of  Ethics.  It  is  here  maintained  that  morality  is 
conditioned  upon  desires; — that  desires  may  arise  in  the  mind  or  in  the  body;  and, 
in  both  cases,  are  expressed  through  a  man's  thinking  as  well  as  acting; — that  desires 
of  the  mind,  according  to  the  testimony  of  both  metaphysics  and  science,  seek 
objects  seen  or  heard,  the  mental  effects  of  which  can  be  unselfishly  shared  with 
others;  whereas  desires  of  the  body,  as  of  touch  and  taste,  seek  selfish  and  exclusive 
possession  of  that  which  ministers  to  individual  indulgence — that  conscience  is  a 
consciousness  of  conflict  between  these  two  classes  of  desires;  and  that  this  con- 
sciousness can  best  be  made  to  cease  by  producing  an  experience  of  harmony  through 
subordinating  rather  than  suppressing  desires  of  the  body  whose  life  they  serve. 
A  little  thinking  will  discover  moreover,  that  this  conception  of  conscience  accords 
with  the  nature  of  a  mind  that  is  influenced  by  suggestion  and  reason  more  power- 
fully than  by  dictation  and  compulsion; — as  well,  too,  as  with  the  requirements  of 
all  phases  of  spiritual  religion,  because  this  theory  shows  how  body  and  mind  may 
be  separated  after  death,  and  the  latter# alone  survive,  and  yet  how,  even  in  these 
conditions,  a  mind  that  has  not  learned,  in  this  life,  to  subordinate  the  physical  and 
material  may  still  carry  with  it  the  bias  of  their  influence.  The  volume  endeavors 
to  make  clear,  too,  that  the  history  of  ethical  theories  records  no  denial  of  the  exist- 
ence of  this  conflict  in  consciousness; — and  that  a  recognition  of  the  full  import  of 
this  fact  would  remove  the  differences  between  them,  and  furnish  a  single  philo- 
sophic principle  fundamental  to  them  all; — also  that  few,  if  any,  immoral  acts  in 
private  or  public  life  could  fail  to  be  detected,  prevented,  or  corrected  by  an  appli- 
cation to  practice  of  the  tests  that  accord  with  this  theory. 

"The  student  of  ethics  will  considerably  fortify  his  knowledge  of  the  history  of 
ethical  thought  by  reading  the  book,  especially  the  first  twelve  chapters.  In  these 
Mr.  Raymond  embodies,  with  copious  references,  his  extensive  knowledge  of  what 
has  been  written  and  thought  by  moral  philosophers.  On  pp.  63-67,  for  instance, 
will  be  found  in  footnotes  a  kind  of  classified  anthology  of  all  the  definitions  given 
of  conscience  by  modern  writers.  The  various  ethical  theories  holding  the  field  do 
not,  he  thinks,  recognize  as  indispensable  the  cooperation,  in  every  slightest  detail 
of  thought  and  feeling,  of  the  two  necessary  factors  of  every  desire;  and  he  claims 
that  his  own  doctrine  keeps  to  the  purpose  he  avows  in  his  opening  chapter, — to 
draw  no  inference,  and  to  advance  no  theory,  not  warranted  by  known  facts  as 
ascertainable  in  connection  with  the  operations  of  natural  law.  .  .  .  Chapters 
XIII  to  XXIII  deal  acutely  and  comprehensively  with  the  various  sides  of  American 
life." — London  (England)  Times. 

In  an  article  entitled  A  Desirable  Acquaintance,  Prof.  A.  S.  Hobart,  D.D.,  of  Crozer 
Theological  Seminary,  after  mentioning  his  twenty  years'  experience  in  teaching 
Ethics,  says,  "I  find  this  book  the  only  one  that  has  come  within  the  range  of  my 
reading  which  has,  for  the  basis  of  its  system,  what  I  have  found  to  be  satisfactory. 
The  writer  assumes  that  there  is,  in  the  nature  of  things,  a  law  of  ethical  conduct 
as  continuous  and  self-evincing  as  is  the  law  of  physical  health.  .  .  .  The  study 
of  psychology  has  opened  the  mind  to  inspection  as  we  open  the  back  of  a  watch- 
case  and  see  the  wheels  go  round;  and  this  study  lays  its  crowns  of  victorious  ex- 
plorations at  the  feet  of  ethics.  .  .  .  His  view  is  that  conscience  is  the  sense  of 
conflict  between  bodily  and  mental  desires,  .  .  .  therefore,  not  a  guide;  it  is 
only  a  sense  of  lostness  in  the  woods,  that  wants  a  guide.  Good  sense  and  good 
religion  are  the  guides  to  be  consulted.  By  many  illustrations  and  very  clear 
reasoning,  he  verifies  his  view.  Then,  ...  he  takes  up  the  task — unusual  in 
such  books — of  showing  how  the  leading  moral  qualities  can  and  ought  to  be  cul- 
,  tivated.  In  view  of  my  own  careful  reading  of  the  book,  I  venture  to  call  attention 
to  it  as  a  most  fertile  source  of  instruction  and  suggestion  for  ethical  teaching." — 
The  Baptist. 

"  Professor  Raymond  attacks  materialism  and  militarism.  .  .  .  He  shows  that 
the  materialist  makes  morality  depend  on  what  is  external  to  man,  and  that  the 
militarist  relies  on  physical  force  for  the  promotion  of  morality.  .  .  .  There  is 
much  in  this  book  to  commend,  especially  its  sincerity.  .  .  .  The  author  is  some- 
times too  advanced  ...  he  is,  in  fact,  a  moral  revolutionist.  But  he  always  tries 
to  determine  not  what  is  pleasant  but  what  is  just." — Rochester  (N.  Y.)  Post-Express. 

G.  P.  PUTNAM'S   SONS,  New  York   and  London,  Publishers 


TEXT-BOOKS  BY  PROFESSOR  RAYMOND 

"The  book  Ethics  and  Natural  Law  is  an  interesting  statement  of  the  author's 
theory  that  the  ethical  life  is  a  harmonious  life  in  which  the  antagonisms  between 
mind  and  body  are  reconciled  by  the  dominance  of  mind.  The  consciousness  of 
conflict  between  body  and  mind  accounts  for  what  we  call  conscience  which  tells 
that  the  conflict  should  be  ended.  It  is  ended  when  the  desires  of  the  body  in  the 
whole  realm  of  human  relationships  are  subordinated  to  the  desires  of  the  mind. 
The  analogy  between  the  aesthetic  and  moral  harmonies  is  excellently  developed, 
and  one  is  reminded  of  the  Platonic  principle  of  the  harmonious  subordination  of 
the  lower  to  the  higher.  In  the  statement  of  the  various  ethical  theories  which  the 
author  reviews  he  is  clear  and  satisfactory.  The  classification  of  his  material  is 
consistent  throughout.  His  emphasis  on  the  necessity  of  the  subordination,  and 
not  the  destruction  of  the  desires  of  the  body,  is  of  notable  importance.  His  doc- 
trine calls  for  the  spiritual  utiliz  ation  of  the  natural  powers  and  makes  mind  supreme 
in  the  individual,  the  social,  and  the  governmental  life  of  mankind." — John  A. 
Mcintosh,  D.D.,  Professor  of  the  Philosophy  of  Religion  and  Ethics,  McCormick 
(Presbyterian)  Theological  Seminary. 

"A  working  theory  of  ethics  that  has  much  to  recommend  it.  Experts  in  this 
field  of  inquiry  have  long  taken  for  granted  the  conflict  between  the  larger  ends  of 
society  and  the  narrower  ends  pursued  by  the  individual.  The  author  emphasizes 
the  deeper  clash  within  the  individual  between  the  desires  of  the  body  and  those  of 
the  mind,  noting  that  while  both  are  natural,  the  lower  impulses  should  always  be 
held  in  subordination  to  the  higher.  He  would  have  the  mind's  desires  kept  upper- 
most in  all  the  phases  of  individual  and  collective  life, — in  courtship,  marriage, 
family  training,  the  general  relations  between  employers  and  employees,  forms  of 
government,  and  the  framing  and  administering  of  laws.  .  .  .  Permanently 
beneficial  results  in  labor  disputes  can  be  reached  not  through  resort  to  force  but 
only  through  appeals  to  the  mind  .  .  .  and  he  is  a  severe  critic  of  executives  who 
further  the  interests  of  their  party  at  the  expense  of  the  country's  interests.  The 
work  contains  an  excellent  summary  of  ancient  and  modern  ethical  theories." — 
Boston  Herald. 

"When  once  you  make  desire  dynamic,  you  have  a  spiritual  actuating  principle. 
This  is  the  basis  upon  which  you  have  reared  a  stately  ethical  edifice.  Its  founda- 
tion rests  on  man,  on  human  rationality;  and  story  rises  above  story  of  ever  higher 
personal,  social,  and  political  relations,  with  the  light  of  the  universe  of  God  stream- 
ing through  the  windows.  The  absence  of  the  terminology  of  theology  is  more  than 
compensated  by  the  high  quality  of  the  religious  ferver  and  spiritual  insight.  I 
commend  this  book  very  strongly, — its  scholarly  ripeness,  its  intellectual  honesty, 
and  its  ethical  purpose." — Dr.  Abram  Simon,  Rabbi  of  "The  Hebrew  Congrega- 
tion," and  President  of  the  Board  of  Education  of  Washington,  D.  C. 

"A  valuable  contribution  to  Ethical  theory.  While  his  system  has  something  in 
common  with  intuitionism,  utilitarianism,  and  ethical  evolutionism,  he  is  not  a 
disciple  of  any  of  them.  .  .  .  The  main  thesis  of  the  book  is  that  there  are  two 
classes  of  desires, — those  of  the  body  and  those  of  the  mind;  and  that  there  is  con- 
tinual struggle  for  the  mastery  between  them.  .  .  .  This  thesis  is  supported  by 
numerous  citations  from  writers  on  ethics  which  show  the  author's  wide  and  thorough 
acquaintance  with  the  literature  of  the  subject.  The  style  of  the  treatise  is  a  model 
of  clearness;  it  is  dignified  but  never  dull  or  dry,  and  it  is  occasionally  illumined  by 
flashes  of  humor.  The  work  is  a  practical  guide  to  right  living,  as  the  author  applies 
his  theory  to  every  department  of  human  life,  individual  social,  national,  and  sheds 
the  light  of  his  wisdom  on  every  question  of  human  conduct.  Students  of  ethics 
cannot  afford  to  neglect  this  book.  It  ought  to  be  in  the  libraries  of  parents  of  sons 
and  daughters  approaching  manhood  and  womanhood." — The  Chronicle  (Prot. 
Epis.)  Monthly. 

"Professor  Raymond  extracts  a  fundamental  principle  that  largely  reconciles 
existing  ethical  theories  .  .  .  makes  distinctions  that  have  vitality,  and  will  repay 
the  necessary  study  and  application." — Scientific  American. 

"In  the  course  of  his  argument  the  author  discusses  at  considerable  length  the 
various  factors  and  agencies  that  contribute  to  the  making  and  unmaking  of  the 
lives  of  men  and  women  in  so  far  as  their  usefulness  to  their  fellow  creatures  is 
concerned.  In  his  treatment  of  these  subjects  he  is  at  all  times  candid  and  fair- 
minded,  in  most  cases  reviewing  both  sides  of  the  question  at  issue."— Chronicle 
Telegraph  (Pittsburg,  Pa.). 

"The  author  writes  with  a  purpose  that  seeks  to  be  exhaustive,  and  to  cover 
much  of  the  field  of  practical  living.  He  is  analytic  and  comprehensive,  and,  above 
all,  scholarly.  He  has  made  a  contribution  in  this  field  of  research  that  will  be 
received  with  enthusiasm,  and  readily  turned  into  the  realm  of  productive  thought." 
— Western  (Methodist)  Christian  Advocate,  Cincinnati,  Ohio. 

G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS,  New  York  and   London,  Publishers 


OTHER  BOOKS  BY  PROFESSOR  RAYMOND 

Fundamentals  in  Education,  Art,  and  Civics :  Essays  and 
Addresses.     8vo,  cloth.     Net,  $140;  by  mail,  $1.53. 

"Of  fascinating  interest  to  cultured  readers,  to  the  student,  the  teacher,  the  poet, 
the  artist,  the  musician,  in  a  word  to  all  lovers  of  sweetness  and  light.  The  author  has 
a  lucid  and  vigorous  style,  and  is  often  strikingly  original.  What  impresses  one  is 
the  personality  of  a  profound  thinker  and  a  consummate  teacher  behind  every 
paragraph." — Dundee  Courier,  Scotland. 

"The  articles  cover  a  wide  field  and  manifest  a  uniformly  high  culture  in  every 
field  covered.  It  is  striking  how  this  great  educator  seems  to  have  anticipated  the 
educational  tendencies  of  our  times  some  decades  before  they  imprest  the  rest  of  us. 
He  has  been  a  pathfinder  for  many  younger  men,  and  still  points  the  way  to  higher 
heights.     The  book  is  thoroughly  up-to-date." — Service,  Philadelphia. 

"Clear,  informing,  and  delightfully  readable.  Whether  the  subject  is  art  and 
morals,  technique  in  expression,  or  character  in  a  republic,  each  page  will  be  found 
interesting  and  the  treatment  scholarly,  but  simple,  sane,  and  satisfactory  .  .  .  th( 
6tory  of  the  Chicago  fire  is  impressingly  vivid." — Chicago  Standard. 

"He  is  a  philosopher,  whose  encouraging  idealism  is  well  grounded  in  scientific 
6tudy,  and  who  illuminates  points  of  psychology  and  ethics  as  well  as  of  art  when 
they  come  up  in  the  course  of  the  discussion. " — The  Scotsman,  Edinburgh,  Scotland. 

"A  scholar  of  wide  learning,  a  teacher  of  experience,  and  a  writer  of  entertaining 
and  convincing  style." — Chicago  Examiner. 

"'The  Mayflower  Pilgrims'  and  'Individual  Character  in  Our  Republic*  call  for 
unstinted  praise.  They  are  interpenetrated  by  a  splendid  patriotism." — Rochester 
Post-Express. 

"Agreeably  popularizes  much  that  is  fundamental  in  theories  of  life  and  thought. 
The  American  people  owe  much  of  their  progress,  their  optimism,  and  we  may  say 
their  happiness  to  the  absorption  of  just  such  ideals  as  Professor  Raymond  stands 
for." — Minneapolis  Book  Review  Digest.^ 

"They  deal  with  subjects  of  perennial  interest,  and  with  principles  of  abiding 
importance,  and  they  are  presented  with  the  force  and  lucidity  which  his  readers 
have  come  to  look  for  in  Dr.  Raymond." — Living  Age,  Boston. 

Suggestions  for  the  Spiritual  Life — College  Chapel  Talks. 

8vo.,  cloth.     Net,  $1.40;  by  mail,  $1.53. 

"Sermons  of  more  than  usual  worth,  full  of  thought  of  the  right  kind,  fresh, 
strong,  direct,  manly.  .  .  .  Not  one  seems  to  strain  to  get  a  young  man's  atten- 
tion by  mere  popular  allusions  to  a  student  environment.  They  are  spiritual, 
scriptural,  of  straight  ethical  import,  meeting  difficulties,  confirming  cravings, 
amplifying  tangled  processes  of  reasoning,  and  not  forgetting  the  emotions." — Hart- 
ford Theological  Seminary  Record  (Congregationalist). 

"The  clergyman  who  desires  to  reach  young  men  especially,  and  the  teacher  of 
men's  Bible  Classes  may  use  this  collection  of  addresses  to  great  advantage.  .  .  . 
The  subjects  are  those  of  every  man's  experience  in  character  building  .  .  .  such  a 
widespread  handling  of  God's  word  would  have  splendid  results  in  the  production 
of  men." — The  Living  Church  (Episcopalian). 

"Great  themes,  adequately  considered.  .  .  .  Surely  the  young  men  who 
listened  to  these  sermons  must  have  been  stirred  and  helped  by  them  as  we  have 
been  stirred  and  helped  as  we  read  them." — Northfield  (Mass.)  Record  of  Christian 
Work  (Evangelical). 

"They  cover  a  wide  range.  They  are  thoughtful,  original,  literary,  concise, 
condensed,  pithy.  They  deal  with  subjects  in  which  the  young  mind  will  be  inter- 
ested."—  Western  Christian  Advocate  (Methodist). 

"Vigorous  thought,  vigorously  expressed.  One  is  impressed  by  the  moderation 
and  sanity  of  the  teachings  here  set  forth  and  scholarly  self-restraint  in  statement. 
Back  of  them  is  not  only  a  believing  mind,  but  genuine  learning  and  much  hard 
thinking." — Lutheran  Observer. 

"  Though  most  of  the  addresses  were  prepared  over  forty  years  ago  ...  no 
chapter  in  the  book  seems  to  be  either  ' old-f ogyish '  or  'unorthodox.'  " — The  Watch' 
man  (Boston,  Baptist). 

"The  preacher  will  find  excellent  models  for  his  work  and  stimulating  thought  .  .  . 
attractively  presented  and  illustrated.  .  .  .  The  addresses  are  scholarly  and 
especially  adapted  to  cultivated  minds.  They  show  evidence  of  intimate  acquaint- 
ance with  modern  science  and  sympathy  with  modern  ideas." — Springfield  (Mass.) 
Republican. 

"Beautiful  and  inspiring  discourses  .  .  .  embody  the  ripe  conviction  of  a  mind 
of  exceptional  refinement,  scholarship,  and  power  ...  a  psychologist,  a  phil- 
osopher, and  a  poet. " — N.  Y.  Literary  Digest. 

"Never  was  such  a  book  more  needed  by  young  men  than  just  now." — PhiladeU 
fhia  Public  Ledger. 

FUNK  &  WAGNALLS  COMPANY,  Pubs.  New  York  and  London, 


Other  Books  by  Professor  Raymond 


The  Psychology  of  Inspiration.     8 vo.,  cloth.    (New  Revised 
Edition).     Net,  $2.00;  by  mail,  $2.14. 

The  book  founds  its  conclusions  on  a  study  of  the  action  of  the  human  mind  when 
obtaining  and  expressing  truth,  as  this  action  has  been  revealed  through  the  most 
recent  investigations  of  physiological,  psychological,  and  psychic  research;  and  the 
freshness  end  criginality  of  the  presentation  is  acknowledged  and  commended  by 
such  authorities  as  Dr.  J.  Mark  Baldwin,  Professor  of  Psychology  in  Johns  Hopkins 
University,  who  says  that  its  psychological  position  is  "new  and  valuable";  Dr. 
W.  T.  Harris,  late  United  States  Commissioner  of  Education  and  the  foremost 
metaphysician  in  the  country,  who  says  it  is  sure  "to  prove  helpful  to  many  who 
fin  £  themselves  on  the  border  line  between  the  Christian  and  the  non-Christian 
beliefs";  and  Dr.  Edward  Everett  Hale,  who  says  that  "no  one  has  approached  the 
subject  from  this  point  of  view."  He  characterizes  it,  too,  as  an  "endeavor  to 
formulate  conceptions  that  almost  every  Christian  to-day  believes,  but  without  know- 
ing why  he  does  so."  As  thus  intimated  by  Dr.  Hale,  the  book  is  not  a  mere  con- 
tribution to  apologetics — not  a  mere  defense  of  Christianity.  It  contains  a  formula- 
tion of  principles  that  underlie  all  rational  interpretation  of  all  forms  of  revealed 
religion.  These  principles  are  applied  in  the  book  to  Christian  doctrine,  faith,  and 
conduct;  to  the  services,  discipline,  and  unity  of  the  church;  and  to  the  methods  of 
insuring  success  in  missionary  enterprise.  It  strives  to  reveal  both  the  truth  and  the 
error  that  are  in  such  systems  of  thought  as  are  developed  in  AGNOSTICISM, 
PRAGMATISM,  MODERNISM,  THEOSOPHY,  SPIRITUALISM,  AND  CHRIS- 
TIAN SCIENCE. 

The  first  and,  perhaps,  the  most  important  achievement  of  the  book  is  to  show 
that  the  fact  of  inspiration  can  be  demonstrated  scientifically;  in  other  words,  that 
the  inner  subconscious  mind  can  be  influenced  irrespective  of  influences  exerted 
through  the  eyes  and  the  ears,  *.  e„  by  what  one  sees  or  hears.  In  connection  with 
this  fact  it  is  also  shown  that,  when  the  mind  is  thus  inwardly  or  inspirationally 
influenced,  as,  for  example,  in  hypnotism,  the  influence  is  suggestive  and  not  dicta- 
torial. As  a  result,  the  inspired  person  presents  the  truth  given  him  not  according 
to  the  letter,  but  according  to  the  spirit.  His  object  is  not  to  deal  with  facts  and  impart 
knowledge,  as  science  does.  This  would  lead  men  to  walk  by  sight.  His  object  is 
to  deal  with  principles,  and  these  may  frequently  be  illustrated  just  as  accurately  by 
apparent,  or,  as  in  the  case  of  the  parable,  by  imagined  circumstances,  as  by  actual 
ones.  For  this  reason,  many  of  the  scientific  and  historical  so-called  "objections" 
to  the  Bible  need  not  be  answered  categorically.  Not  only  so,  but  such  faith  as  it  is 
natural  and  right  that  a  rational  being  should  exercise  can  be  stimulated  and  devel- 
oped in  only  the  degree  in  which  the_  text  of  a  sacred  book  is  characterized  by  the 
very  vagueness  and  variety  of  meaning  and  statement  which  the  higher  criticism 
of  the  Bible  has  brought  to  light.  The  book  traces  these  to  the  operation  and  re- 
quirements of  the  human  mind  through  which  inspiration  is  received  and  to  which 
it  is  imparted.  Whatever  inspires  must  appear  to  be,  in  some  way,  beyond  the  grasp 
of  him  who  communicates  it,  and  can  make  him  who  hears  it  think  and  train  him  to 
think,  in  the  degree  only  in  which  it  is  not  comprehensive  or  complete;  but  merely, 
like  everything  else  in  nature,  illustrative  of  that  portion  of  truth  which  the  mind 
needs  to  be  made  to  find  out  for  itself. 


"A  book  that  everybody  should  read  .  .  .  medicinal  for  profest  Christians,  and 
full  of  guidance  and  encouragement  for  those  finding  themselves  somewhere  between 
the  desert  and  the  town.  The  sane,  fair,  kindly  attitude  taken  gives  of  itself  a 
profitable  lesson.  The  author  proves  conclusively  that  his  mind — and  if  his,  why 
not  another's? — can  be  at  one  and  the  same  time  sound,  sanitary,  scientific,  and 
essentially  religious." — The  Examiner,  Chicago. 

"The  author  writes  with  logic  and  a  'sweet  reasonableness'  that  will  doubtless 
convince  manyhalting  minds.     It  is  an  inspiring  book." — Philadelphia  Inquirer. 

"It  is,  we  think,  difficult  to  overestimate  the  value  of  this  volume  at  the  present 
critical  pass  in  the  history  of  Christianity." — The  Arena,  Boston. 

"The  author  has  taken  up  a  task  calling  for  heroic  effort,  and  has  given  us  a  volume 
worthy  of  careful  study.  .  .  .  The  conclusion  is  certainly  very  reasonable."— 
Christian  Intelligencer,  New  York. 

"Interesting,  suggestive,  helpful," — Boston  Congregationalist. 

"Thoughtful,  reverent,  suggestive." — Lutheran  Observer,  Philadelphia. 

"  Prof  essor#  Raymond  is  a  clear  thinker,  an  able  writer,  and  an  earnest  Christian, 
and  his  book  is  calculated  to  be  greatly  helpful  to  those  in  particular  who,  brought  up 
in  the  Christian  faith,  find  it  impossible  longer  to  reconcile  the  teachings  of  the 
Church  with  the  results  of  modern  scientific  thought." — Newark  (  N.  J.)  Evening 
News. 

FUNK  &  WAGNALLS  COMPANY.  Pubs..  New  York  and  London 


